SOUTHERN PRESBYTER'S 



SECOND LETTER 



MINISTERS OF THE GOSPEL 



ALL DENOMINATIONS 



SLAVERY. 



NAT HAN 'LORD, _ 

R E SIDE N T I" 1> A K I M U T II (J <> L L E 



BOSTON: 

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPA N Y 

NEW YOKE: 

I) . A P P L E T N AND C M P A N Y . 

1855. 



2~. 



SOUTHERN PRESBYTER'S 



SECOND LETTER 



MINISTERS OF THE GOSPEL 



ALL DENOMINATIONS 



SLAVERY. 



V 

NATHAN LORD, 

SIDE NT OF DARTMOUTH COLLE< 



BOSTON: 

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY. 

NEW YORK: 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 

1855. 






£>■ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by 

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 



CAMBRIDGE : 

ALLEN AND FARNIIAM, PRINTERS. 



LETTER. 



A Northern Presbyter addresses this second letter 
to his brethren, of all denominations, on slavery. His 
former letter appears not to have been generally ac- 
ceptable. It has been sharply criticized in many 
religions and secular journals. A leading representa- 
tive Quarterly — The New Englander — calls down 
upon the writer the censure of the church, and, sub- 
sequently, undertakes to set forth, at large, his alleged 
errors, and raise the note of warning against their 
pernicious influence. Presbyter proposes in these 
pages to justify what he has before written. He 
presumes to question the wisdom of his reviewers ; 
and hopes to substantiate, by additional reasonings, 
his original positions. Whether what he now writes 
will be more convincing or acceptable, he has no 
concern to inquire. It is in his mind to write it, and 
he leaves it to produce whatever results it may 
please an infinitely wise Providence to appoint. 

Presbyter's former letter was written in a full knowl- 



edge of what the New Englander and other journals 
have since published in reproof of it. It was under- 
taken for the purpose of suggesting the invalidity of 
those popular methods of reasoning on the subject in 
question, which those respectable periodicals repre- 
sent, and of allaying the dangerous agitations which 
they have contributed to produce. It was designed 
to encourage a more legitimate method of discussion, 
by turning inquirers from the accidents and contin- 
gents of slavery, which occasion such irreconcilable 
diversities of opinion among wise and good men, and 
inflame the passions of the generality, to its element- 
ary principles, its providential design, and its com- 
prehensive bearings and relations in respect to the 
moral government of God. The question of slavery, 
especially as it concerns ministers of the Gospel, is 
simply ethical and theological. It must be tried, 
therefore, by a Divine standard, and not at the bar 
of an imaginative philosophy, or a sentimental phi- 
lanthropy ; not on the political arena, nor by vote of 
popular assemblies, or the conceits of fiction and 
romance. The letter proposed that authoritative 
test. " To the law and to the testimony." 

It is no answer, then, merely to reproduce, in 
similar or different forms, the same arguments or 
methods whose unsoundness and fallaciousness had 
been condemned. Nothing is settled by merely evad- 
ing the criterion which Presbyter propounds, and 






ringing changes upon the exhausted topics of anti- 
slavery literature which that criterion reproves. Such 
finesse might suffice for a temporary popular effect, 
but could serve no abiding purpose of truth or chari- 
ty. It is unworthy of the subject, and the occasion. 
Presbyter takes the question of slavery from its acci- 
dents to its principles, and discusses it accordingly. 
He must be met, therefore, on his own ground, or, 
whether right or wrong, his Jetter is not answered ; 
and all avoidance of its issues, or stale repetitions of 
contrary theories and interpretations, are a virtual 
acknowledgment of its correctness. Wherefore, the 
criticisms of the New Englander, and others like 
them, because they are thus evasive, need no refuta- 
tion, but a reference to the letter itself. Yet it may 
be of consequence to show, more particularly, and in 
detail, wherein they reach not their mark; and to lay 
open the sophistry which is intended to give them 
the appearance and effect of a reply. 

In this pamphlet, Presbyter will confine himself 
especially to his reviewer in the New Englander. 
That ardent writer is a fit representative of his class. 
From one all may be known : for, though they 
exhibit different degrees of learning and ingenuity, 
they use the same materials, and after the same 
fashion. There could, indeed, be but little difference 
between them in these respects ; for the fountain of 
their new philosophy is not deep, and a single channel 
1* 



suffices. to bear off its impetuous and noisy waters. 
The reviewer is one of the best specimens, and is 
accordingly so commended by his satisfied friends. 
He publishes by request. He is a writer of evident 
intelligence and Christian virtue, — well informed, 
earnest, sincere, resolved. He condemns his adver- 
sary, without stint, and agreeably to his honest con- 
victions, for alleged intellectual blindness and moral 
delinquency. He pities him, as is kind, in his conse- 
quent state of degradation ; and does what he can to 
abridge his pernicious influence. Yet he does not 
quite abandon him as a reprobate ; and would give 
him over to public censure, and official destruction, 
only for the sake of his ultimate repentance and 
salvation. Presbyter would take no exception to 
him, in these respects ; for every writer should be 
suffered to free himself agreeably to his own sensibili- 
ties and tastes. His ideas, and not his temperament, 
or his rhetoric, alone concern the question at issue. 
All that is now proposed is to show wherein his argu- 
ment is nothing to his purpose ; and to elucidate 
more fully the principles which he so imperfectly 
comprehends, and so ineffectually disputes. Indeed, 
but for this latter purpose, namely, the fuller develop- 
ment and exposition of the principles embodied in 
his first letter, Presbyter would not have thought it 
material to invite his brethren to the perusal of a 
second. — The logical, order, both of the letter and the 



review, will be followed, as far as it may seem of 
consequence to pursue the subject. 

I. The Question. 

The letter of Presbyter first calls the attention of 
its readers to the question of the Divine right of slavery. 
He uses the term according to its proper scientific 
import, — as the denominator of a state of bondage 
in which one man becomes, by law, the property of 
another man, and subject to the master's will. The 
definition is implied, expressed, and kept up through- 
out the letter, and is continually guarded as simply 
and alone descriptive of the stated relation subsisting 
between the parties. The one owns, the other is 
owned, according to law so made and provided. It 
presupposes an authority of the State, under God, to 
institute the relation, and to regulate it, agreeably 
to its natural intention and design. The master 
becomes, by law, sole proprietor, and the slave a 
chattel personal, in distinction from a chattel material, 
which implies, from necessity of the case, that their 
respective moral and spiritual relations are undis- 
turbed, and that both master and slave are brought 
together in peculiar and distinctive relations, as well 
to God as to each other ; and are held to answer for 
the performance of their respective duties to him as 
the sovereign proprietor and ruler of all. But the 
slave is the master's money. No man but the master 
has a right to his person, or his services ; and he has 



s 



no right to withhold service from the master, or 
alienate it to another man. He is subject to his 
master's will alone ; but both parties are under law 
to God, and to God's minister — the State. 

The question is whether this relation is right or 
wrong ; and it is independent of the moral character 
of the master, or the slave, and distinct from it. One 
or the other, or both, may be bad men, in any sense 
of the term ; but that affects not the nature, intention, 
or design of the relation which is constituted between 
them. Slavery is a variety of government by which 
one man rules over another, and holds him subservient 
to his will, as his lawful and proper possession, subject 
to the ordinances of God, and of the State. The 
question is not whether this species of property may 
be acquired rightfully by mere rapine, fraud, or 
stealth, or used for nefarious purposes, or regulated 
by tyrannical and oppressive laws, — for that question 
would be absurd, — but whether God forbids it to be 
acquired, held, or used at all ; that is, whether it is 
prohibited in Scripture ; or, whether, in the nature 
of the case, it is impossible for one man so to rule 
over another man without violating the principles 
of natural justice and benevolence? and whether 
States, or individual persons under their authority, in 
carrying on slavery at all, do certainly and necessarily 
sin against God ? 

These distinctions are perfectly obvious. Our 







quick reviewer himself admits them. He could not 
do otherwise. He does more,, as bound by his relig- 
ious profession. He admits that if God has required 
or authorized one part of the human family to enslave 
another part, that constitutes a right, or duty, or both, 
as the case may be. This admission presupposes the 
absolute sovereignty of God over all his creatures, 
his infinite knowledge of their character, conditions, 
and wants, and his prerogative, as infinitely excellent 
in all respects, to carry on the affairs of the world so 
as best to subserve the ends of its present fallen, sin- 
ful, but reprieved and probationary state. It pre- 
cludes all creatures from sitting in judgment upon 
the counsels of God, or questioning his decrees. It 
recognizes the first and fundamental principle of 
theology and ethics, without w T hich right and wrong, 
in any actual sense, w T oulcl be impossible, namely, a 
personal God and moral governor, in opposition to all 
atheism and mere naturalism; and it justifies the 
supreme authority of natural and revealed religion 
as the guide of life, inasmuch as there can be" no 
higher will, or authority, or standard of right and 
wrong than the Divine will, and no appeal from it. 
The reviewer, as a minister of the Gospel, is aware 
that he must begin with the acknowledgment of this 
principle, or he has no foundation. Had he kept it 
distinctly before his mind, and held to it, consistently, 
in his subsequent writing, he would have come out in 
Yery different conclusions. 



10 



But our excited author, captivated by his idol of 
an inner light, a higher law, a godlike conscious- 
ness, — the imaginary self-divinity of the human 
nature, — and dazzled by his chimera of a divine and 
free humanity, when he begins to reason, immediately 
deserts the principle, and confounds the distinctions 
which he had acknowledged. He turns short away 
from the issue which Presbyter had proposed, and 
presents another, and a different issue which is noth- 
ing to his purpose. All his subsequent reasoning has 
respect only to that falsely substituted issue, and is 
mere legerdemain. 

Thus : — the reviewer presents truly, that Presby- 
ter proposes "to defend the institution .(slavery) 
which exists in this country." But that is not the 
proposition which it is convenient for him to contro- 
vert, and he immediately qualifies it by an adjunct of 
his own, which makes it another, and a different prop- 
osition ; namely, that it is the object of Presbyter to 
defend the institution which exists in this country, — 
as it exists ; and not only so, but as it exists according 
to the reviewer's own onesided and distorted account 
of it. He argues not, as he ought, on the first and 
true, but, as he ought not, on the second and false 
presentment of the question. He makes that false 
presentment the entire and only ground of his whole ' 
criticism. Presbyter had not proposed to defend 
slavery, as it exists in this country, or as it ever 



11 



existed anywhere, on the whole, and much less as it 
exists in the morbid fancy of the reviewer ; — just as 
he would not undertake to defend Nero, but govern- 
ment ; the pope, but Christianity ; administrators, but 
their institutions ; accidents, but their substances ; 
the abuses of a thing, but the thing itself. He 
insisted upon these fundamental distinctions, lest his 
incautious brethren, in their zeal against bad factors 
and agents, should assail an ordinance of God, and 
precipitate ruin when they intended only reformation. 
Bad masters there are, and bad laws, and bad customs 
at the South ; and because of the manifold existing 
evils and irregularities growing out of the abuses of 
slavery, Presbyter himself insisted that the judg- 
ments of heaven were impending over the guilty 
nation, of which judgments not the least is the per- 
mitted madness of the abolitionists. He accepted 
not their exaggerated and absurd accounts of these 
existing evils. He rebuked their false statements, 
their intemperate crusade whose natural effect would 
be a civil and servile war, their wild romance of a 
new but nondescript reconstruction of the State upon 
the hitherto undefined, and forever indefinable, and 
incomprehensible ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity, 
in any merely natural conditions of the earth and 
man. But great abuses were admitted; not as 
reasons for subverting foundations laid, as Presbyter 
affirmed, by the providence of God, but for building 



12 



upon them a superstructure more conformable to his 
will, and more subservient to his designs. All this 
the reviewer studiously evades. He presents Presby- 
ter, invidiously, as the defender and patron, not of 
an institution, which, on his own admission, ought to 
be patronized if it be an ordinance of God, but of 
the abuses of that institution whose Divine origin is 
the very question in dispute. He should have met 
that question on the grounds suggested by Presby- 
ter — the only grounds where a true decision can be 
had, — instead of diverting the attention of his readers, 
as he has done, by a mere logical finesse. Yet Pres- 
byter believes him not to have intended an artifice. 
He was merely bewildered by the excitement of his 
chimerical ideas. There are intoxications besides 
that of strong drink, and far more dangerous, in 
which men sometimes see double, and seem to them- 
selves to hit the substance when they strike only at 
the spectre. 

Presbyter proposed that slavery may be from 
God, because of its analogy, in many respects, to 
other varieties of rule and government over the 
fallen world, which are admitted to have had their 
origin in him. He claimed that Christian ministers 
ought to inquire diligently into these probabilities, 
and all other sources of evidence in natural and 
revealed religion, lest, instead of being guides and 
conservators, they should inconsiderately become 



13 



agitators of society. He argued that we are not 
competent to determine, a priori, nor at all by our 
unassisted faculties, and least of all, by our mere 
instincts, or by random hypotheses and speculations, 
how such a world as this should be carried on. We 
must ask at the oracles. We must take our impres- 
sions, not from caricatures, but originals ; and decide, 
not passionately, but in the sobriety of calm research. 
Previously to such inquiry, or independently of it, 
to criticize slavery, or any other analogous institu- 
tion, by our imperfect ideas, onesided observations, 
or undigested and untried theories; to accept the 
accounts of heated reformers, or selfish politicians; or 
even to follow the impulse of more generous but un- 
disciplined sensibilities, is unreasonable and unsafe. 
It is unworthy of Christian men, religious teachers, 
and the leaders of God's people. There is too much 
at stake. Yet that is the course of our excellent 
reviewer, and of his school in general. He describes 
slavery as bad at- any rate, a system of mere oppres- 
sions and cruelties; and his adversaries as demoral- 
ized men claiming the Divine authority for an in- 
stitution unquestionably the sum of all villanies and 
abominations. One is amazed that a minister of the 
Gospel should condescend to argue with any persons 
who, in his judgment, are, intellectually, so blind, and, 
morally, so perverse. But he has done it ; and it is 
therefore pertinent to analyze his reasonings. 
2 



14 



II. The Argument. — 1. From Natural Religion. If, 
by natural religion were intended nothing more than 
our reviewer seems to have contemplated, namely, 
the view which the mind takes of our relations and 
duties to God from a study of the works of nature, it 
would indeed be questionable whether slavery, or 
any other institution of social life, would stand the 
test of its criticism ; or rather, whether there would 
then be any criticism, or any social state at all. The 
mere deductions and inferences of our unassisted 
minds from such partial observations as even the 
most cultivated, with their natural depraved biases, 
would be likely to take of the system of the world, 
would be of very little value as a guide of life. In 
respect to the ignorant and besotted, who, in all 
periods, have constituted the generality, they would 
be worse than useless. Consequently, the wise and 
foolish, by different roads, would meet, at length, in 
the same abyss of confusions, discords, and destruc- 
tions, — as Paul has shown. God has never so left 
the world absolutely, to itself: but so far as he has 
done it, the demonstration of man's incompetency has 
been complete. There is no historical evidence, from 
any age or nation, that society could establish itself 
in virtue and prosperity by the teachings even of 
induction and experience ; and, as to the mere in- 
stincts, or the speculative faculties, there is still less 
reason to believe that it could be carried on at all by 



15 



such infantile or fantastic administrations. Man's 
sufficiency for self-knowledge, self-government, or 
self-salvation, is a brilliant phantom; but it figures 
only in the reveries of the philosopher, the declama- 
tions of the politician, the more questionable lucubra- 
tions of the speculative theologian, or the romantic 
dreams of children in general. It abides no jDractical 
test whatever. Apart from prophecy we could not 
reason to a perfected state of the earth, or man, 
from any data of history or experience ; and the 
Scripture refers such a predicted state only to 
supernatural power. In actual life it soon vanishes 
into thin air. 

The problem of our relations and duties to God 
which reason would not have been likely even to 
originate, and certainly could never have solved, has 
its origin and solution in the express teachings of 
God himself. They are embodied in natural and re- 
vealed religion. Natural religion, equally with re- 
vealed, is taught of God. It is not nature's teachings 
concerning God, but God's teachings concerning 
nature, by which He binds the universe to himself; 
and this order it is infinitely dangerous to invert. 
Natural religion is not our instinct, or judgment, or 
fancy, nor our wishes or interpretations concerning 
our relations and duties to God and to each other; for 
that would be to invest humanity with the attributes 
of Divinity, and to nullify the Godhead. But it is 



16 



God's authoritative instruction to us as his creatures, 
and the subjects of his government, during our natu- 
ral state of life and society, in this probationary 
period of our being. Man originates it not, but God 
dispenses it. God, who made the world, gives it the 
law — which, however, man refuses and disobeys. 
God dispenses, and man obscures and perverts it. 
Man declines to brutishness except as God raises 
him; and the ignorance and wickedness of the world 
are both cause and consequence of man's unwilling- 
ness to be raised. It is as true of natural religion as 
of revealed, — " This is the condemnation that light 
has come into the world, and they have loved dark- 
ness rather than light because their deeds were evil." 
The light of all dispensations, is a mere instance of 
the Divine benignity and mercy, for the benefit of the 
otherwise hopelessly alienated and lost. God's com- 
munications are not the supplement or complement 
of man's discoveries, — mere helps to our original and 
self-moved inquiries, — by which God rewards and 
satisfies our antecedent desire and pursuit of knowl- 
edge and virtue ; but they constitute all the true 
knowledge we possess, which, however, we like not 
to retain; or we retain it in our memory but to per- 
vert it in our judgment and affections, and dishonor 
it in our practice, holding the truth of God in un- 
righteousness, till we " are given over to strong delu- 
sion to believe a lie." Great are the confusions of 



17 



the world from turning these matters round about, 
and putting the Divinity in leading strings to human- 
ity, till, insensibly, we make our conceits interpreters 
of the Divine Wisdom, and measure the vast and in- 
comprehensible scheme of providence by our infi- 
nitely low ideas. Probably these confusions were 
never greater than at present ; nor, in respect to any 
subject, than the question now in hand. And the} r 
are likely to be worse confounded in the senseless 
unhingeings and disintegrations of society. 

Agreeably to these views which have stood in the 
judgment of all truly learned and pious antiquity, we 
hold to natural religion, not as a human, but a Di- 
vine institution ; not as a product of the human fac- 
ulties likely or possible to have been reasoned out 
by man, but of God's Spirit who first moved over the 
physical chaos and said, — " Let there be light ! " It 
is a revelation, but oral and traditional, in distinction 
from a written revelation, dispensed, in successive 
periods, according to the exigencies of society, to 
men called and appointed of God, as his servants, to 
be the teachers and guides of mankind in general. 
It is God's own account of his mode of governing 
the world, and his rule for the subordinate govern- 
ment of it by his authorized servants, handed down 
through successive generations, till it was at length 
incorporated and republished, with overt formalities 
and miraculous attestations, in the holy Scriptures. 
2* 



18 



It existed before the Scriptures, but was inserted in 
them, and is proved by them. The Scriptures, except 
so far as they are merely emblematical, or historical 
of the distinctive work of Christ, or political for the 
Jewish nation, consist but of a more full edition and 
enforcement of the earlier oral revelations given for 
the personal and social regulation of the fallen world. 
The peculiar work of Christ recognizes them, is built 
upon them, and is consistent with them. The doc- 
trines and precepts of Christianity all affirm them, 
and require us to live in agreement with them. Any 
refusal of them, or any rationalistic interpretation, as 
if they were superseded by the Gospel, or the Gospel 
were superseded by the new lights of a more ad- 
vanced age, would put the several related parts of 
the Divine economy out of harmony with each other. 
It would virtually nullify them all ; and the practical 
effect would be a general disturbance and disorganiza- 
tion of society. Christianity then only accomplishes 
its intended work of ameliorating the condition of 
mankind, when, for Christ's sake, his promised Spirit 
renews the minds of individual persons, and thus 
diffuses the heavenly life through the constituted 
orders and relations of natural society. Christianity 
intermeddles not with any natural institutions. It 
proposes no change of social organizations. It leaves 
them as God ordained them under the natural law ; 
but to be interpenetrated by his Spirit, and carried 



19 



on conformably to their natural and constitutional 
design till "The times of restitution," when the 
whole fallen scene shall be supernaturally recon- 
structed, and " The kingdom of God " shall come. 

Very instructive it is to observe how, in respect 
to the question here under review, natural religion 
falls into the current of Scripture, and the Scripture 
casts its light back upon natural religion, and both 
illustrate the comprehensive scheme of God's natural 
and moral providence. By the natural law of wick- 
edness the discords and irregularities of earth tend 
constantly to increase and multiply, and to issue, as 
in material natures, in a series of destructions and 
new creations. The power of evil in individual 
minds accumulates, and the consequent disturbances 
of the social state become more aggravated, till, with- 
out restraints, premature and universal catastrophe 
would ensue. God speaks the word, — for his rain- 
bow is painted on the cloud, — and says to the proud 
swelling waves: "Thus far shall ye go, but no fur- 
ther." He interposes governments, to sustain the feeble, 
to check the unruly, to punish transgressors, to de- 
stroy the incorrigibly wicked, to make such examples 
of the evil of sin, and of his displeasure against it, 
that men may see and be afraid, and that the dis- 
tracted world may not die before its time. The most 
comprehensive form of delegated government, and, 
according to nature, the most authoritative, is the 



20 



State; and the State is God's minister, bearing not 
the sword in vain. 

But the world, revolted as it is from the Creator, 
makes very difficult work for the subordinate gov- 
ernments of earth. The difficulty is increased by the 
imperfection and malfeasance of public officers, who 
sometimes abuse their power till the whole distracted 
scene winds up in revolution, and a new dynasty 
appears. But dynasties must exist ; for the world, 
and every State, like every particular man, have their 
respective periods, and, in a state of anarchy, would 
prematurely die. For the more effectual regulation 
of society every State is obliged to make various dis- 
tribution of its powers. Tribes, hordes, states, races, 
sometimes Ml off to such low degrees of ignorance, 
barbarism, and licentiousness, as to require great vigi- 
lance and severe authority from the more intelligent 
and civilized, lest they should become self-destructive, 
or injurious to neighboring States, or precipitate 
general confusion throughout the world. Civilized 
communities are driven to various expedients to fore- 
stall, diminish, or alleviate these necessary evils. One 
of these providential expedients, as old as society 
itself, and an accredited element in its government 
from the beginning, is domestic slaver//, — sign of a bad 
world, yet necessary to keep it from worse condi- 
tions ; — badly enough administered, at best and 
sometimes past endurance, yet, better, on the whole, 



21 



than would be the absence of it, in the existing state 
of society at large. 

Domestic slavery breaks up the power of undisci- 
plined and barbarous hordes, and prevents their de- 
structive combinations. It multiplies, indefinitely, 
the officers of government, distributes them over the 
greatest surface, and diffuses the benefits of restraint 
and discipline among large numbers of the ignorant 
and besotted who could not be reached conveniently, 
or at all, by the central power, or its provincial 
deputies. It places under the control of the more 
intelligent and thrifty families, imbecile or disorderly 
persons who would otherwise roam unlicensed, and 
trains them up to a higher capacity and privilege 
than they could otherwise, by any possibility, attain. 
It does this with the least possible expense, and with 
the advantage of enlisting the humane sympathies 
and prudential interests of masters for elevating the 
otherwise incapable to a higher appreciation of civil- 
ized life, and corresponding efforts to obtain a fitness 
for more dignified conditions. Society in general is thus 
preserved from premature catastrophes, approximates 
more nearly to as high a condition of liberty, intelli- 
gence, thrift, and happiness as could be supposed 
possible in any merely natural state of the fallen 
world. There is nothing conceivable in the institu- 
tion itself, apart from the character of the parties 
connected with it, — in which respect it stands on a 



99 



simple equality with all other institutions of earth, — 
that is not fitted, as things are, to diminish necessary 
evils, and secure the otherwise improbable or impos- 
sible benefits of a probationary state. 

If this account of domestic slavery be called 
theoretical, it has at least the merit of being strictly 
justified by the well-known character of mankind, 
and of having been acted upon by the constituted 
guides and guardians of society, since the children of 
the first murderer interfered with the children of 
the first righteous man. It has the greater merit of 
being republished in the first written statutes of the 
Almighty, and inwrought into the Mosaic code, — a 
rule for God's chosen people who accordingly subju- 
gated, bought, and sold the barbarians round about 
them, and made them hewers of wood and drawers 
of w r ater for the congregation and altars of the Lord. 
The New Testament, equally with the Old, recognizes 
the natural institution, reflects its peculiar light back 
upon it, and confirms it as a natural ordinance of 
God. It stands thus in the Divine counsels as w T ell 
ascertained and settled, in its own order, as any other 
natural institution for the well-being of mankind, 
and must stand against all the spurious wisdom of a 
conceited and bewildered generation. To contend 
against it is to contend against the government of 
God, and put in jeopardy the social interests of the 
world. 



23 



It is out of question that slavery presupposes and 
implies the sadly depraved character of mankind. 
That, however, is not the fault of the institution, but 
of the corrupted race. It is equally out of question 
that it has been made an occasion of the greatest 
crimes, — which, however, equally proves only the 
criminality of its depraved administrators in prosti- 
tuting the Divine ordinance to their own lusts. 
Slavery is adapted and appointed to other ends. It 
is as likely to be useful, in its own natural order, in 
the actual state of things, as other varieties of gov- 
ernment, in their respective orders, administered by 
imperfect and sinful men. It is so in fact. History 
makes it experimentally evident, that, in the worst 
periods of society, as there have been some righteous 
fathers, and some righteous magistrates, so there 
have been some righteous masters, and their good 
conduct has contributed to prolong the continuance 
of the body politic. Society, in all periods, consists 
of a mixture of good and bad men ; and the same 
interior principle of goodness, whether the natural 
goodness of humane affection, or the higher and sav- 
ing virtue of supernatural grace, that has made 
some men benefactors in one relation, has also 
made them benefactors in other relations, and they 
have so far held society together, — "The salt of 
the earth, and the light of the world." From the 
times of the patriarchs till now, the good and bad 



24 



administrations of slavery have been in fair propor- 
tion to those of other related institutions of social 
life ; and have a similar justification in the un- 
perverted conscience of mankind. Badly as slavery 
has been carried on in these last days, and in 
our own country, it has actually, in no small degree, 
answered its righteous and benevolent design. Its 
moral statistics, in comparison with those of African 
barbarians on their native deserts, or of the emanci- 
pated among the civilized nations, are demonstrative 
of its beneficial influence, on the whole, and its sub- 
serviency to the all-wise purposes of God. They are 
sufficient to relieve a serious and impartial mind, in 
respect to the many real or seeming evils that neces- 
sarity attend it. The whole natural condition of 
slaves, in every part of the world, in respect to food, 
clothing, shelter, health, safety, and the means of 
physical happiness in general, is far superior to that of 
any undisciplined negroes on the earth ; and, in re- 
spect to religious knowledge and moral culture, there is 
no comparison. That this condition is no better is, of 
course, a shame to the Christian nations. But that 
the righteous judgment of heaven in the institution 
itself, and in the conduct of it, has been tempered 
with so much mercy, and has, to some considerable 
extent, through the influence of good and patriotic] 
men, answered its natural design, is a striking instance 
of the wisdom and goodness of God. If ai^, in the 



25 



wildness of their romantic zeal, would subvert and 
abolish it, as things still are, and project their 
schemes of revolution in accordance with their 
visionary ideas, they are not likely to be checked by 
any such reference as is here made to the principles 
of the Divine government, the records of history, or 
the warnings of experience. Nothing can overcome 
a vain conceit. But no reasonable man would choose 
to live when and where their experiment should be 
made. 

To views like these, which have been professed by 
the church of God in general, in all the ages, — except 
when it has been infected, as at present, by a more 
illuminated philosophy/- — and by which it has, with 

* The anti-slavery excitements of past ages of the church, as referred to 
by the reviewer, are not properly exceptions to the views above expressed. 
They were in general produced, not by speculative theories of liberty and 
equality, but by the natural revolt of Christian and humane principles 
against wanton abuses of the slaveholding power ; and they contemplated 
not the overthrow of slavery, but its reform ; not a general jail-delivery, 
but such occasional and local emancipations as might consist with the safety 
of the State. They indicated the practical working of the great Christian 
paradox of ' mercy and truth meeting together, righteousness and peace 
embracing each other,' and not the fanatical phrensy of the new era. 
The Church, as represented by the men of sound religion and morality, 
has never been, to any considerable extent, intoxicated by enthusiastic 
and radical ideas ; nor has it committed the honor of Christ to the keep- 
ing of visionary reformers, or intriguing politicians. That phenomenon 
belongs especially to our present period ; and yet, now, not to the church 
general, but the church sectional. It is geographical. The boundary 
between right and wrong, in this respect, can be traced on the map: — a 

3 



26 



a characteristic loyalty, sustained the institutions of 
natural religion, our excited reviewer, under the 
common illusions of his class, condescends to give no 
attention. He simply turns them ofi^ with an af- 
fected indifference, as being " mere vague conjecture 
without a particle of proof." They do not strike 
him. They have no meaning for him. He has been 
too busy with his sentimental novelties, and reforma- 
tory speculations, too zealous in his new crusade for 
a secular millennium, and for retaking Jerusalem be- 
fore the time, to labor in this more fruitful field of 
ethical and theological inquiry. He would even 
think it profane to turn away his mind from the 
bright vision of a golden age of universal emancipa- 
tion, to pursuits so antiquated, and so cramping to 
his new affection. He has chosen a different method. 

Let it be observed more particularly. 

It is not to be doubted that our excellent reviewer, 
principled as he professes to be, in the belief of the sin- 
ful character of mankind, would admit what has been 
said above of the bad tendencies of society in general, 
if it were said in connection with any other subject. 
But, in respect to this stirring theme which has so filled 

convenient way of making moral distinctions, but not absolutely true ; — 
for on this side of Mason and Dixon's line, there are seven thousand men 
who have not bowed the knee to the Baal of any political idolatry. 
They are men, too, of no small stature, whose power, though not greatly 
felt at the ballot-box, will be acknowledged in heaven ; for whose sake, 
popular catastrophes, though not averted, may be deferred and shortened. 



27 



and fired his lively imagination, he forgets, or practi- 
cally ignores it, and reasons on the same line with 
men whose opinions on other subjects he condemns, 
and whose moral and social influence he would op- 
pose. He places himself, unwittingly, in the worst 
possible connections, and gives his sanction to a 
course of thinking which consistently terminates in a 
habit of general unbelief. In his honest zeal for a 
state of universal brotherhood, he appreciates not the 
present incapacity of the generality to enjoy such a 
blessing, or the perpetual impossibility of any such 
organization of society, without higher degrees of in- 
telligence and virtue than have been yet attained in 
the history of mankind. When he touches this theme, 
he overlooks the general ignorance and incompetence 
of men which he has acknowledged, their selfishness 
and recklessness which he has deplored, their unbe- 
lief, perverseness, and hardness of heart for which 
God condemns them, and the necessity of govern- 
ments, and widely distributed helps, to any tolerable 
enjoyment of the means of happiness, and even the 
existence of a social state. He refers too much to 
the tyranny of rulers, too little to the incapacity and 
rebelliousness of subjects, and computes, inadequately, 
the reciprocal influence of these destructive causes 
in the existing derangements of the world. Defec- 
tive social organizations figure more to his excited 
imagination than the spirit of wickedness in every 



28 



human heart, and the abuses of authority seem 
equivalent to its unwarrantable assumption. He sees 
but one side of the question before him, and that he 
places out of its natural relations. He discusses sla- 
very, not as referable to any public necessities, or as 
conducive to any beneficial ends, but as begun, con- 
tinued, and ended in the lusts and passions of usurp- 
ing despots ; not as a matter of general expediency, 
but individual malignity; not as if God were using it, 
by good and bad men alike, in the exercise of their 
respective voluntary natures, to perfect his designs 
of government, but as the work only of malignant 
spirits to defeat the ends of Providence, and multiply 
victims of destruction. He reasons as if all these 
evils were inherent in the system ; as if the system 
alone corrupted the men, not men the system; and 
the destruction of the system would be the regenera- 
tion of the men. He is turned about. He mistakes 
mechanism for life, and life for mechanism ; the pred- 
icate for the subject ; the clothes for the man ; and 
sinks his own Christian doctrine of sin in the pagan doc- 
trine of derangement. He looks at the latter, directly, 
with his telescope, and at the other with the instrument 
inverted. He renounces the experimental wisdom of 
the past, and exalts the speculative fancies of the pres- 
ent ; and the one Christ of the Bible gives way, in his 
mind, to the ' many Christs of a more spiritual philoso- 
phy. He is charmed. In the extravagance of his 



29 



enthusiasm he would, by a touch, transport society 
from its present rough scene of probation, trial, and 
discipline, to Utopia, and mesmerize the accursed 
earth into paradise regained. 

This unfortunate habit of mind leads him, against 
his better principles, to blur, misrepresent, and cari- 
cature whatever is likely to disturb his pleasant 
dream. Thus : — he travesties the argument of 
Presbyter as if, because there are convulsions and 
calamities in the physical, therefore Presbyter had 
concluded there ought to be also corresponding dis- 
turbances in the moral world ; that, because strong 
beasts devour the weaker, therefore strong men 
ought to act like beasts of prey towards their 
inferiors ; and that " a course of oppression is better 
adapted to reform bad men, or relieve the imbecile 
and ignorant, than one of manifest kindness and com- 
passion." Consequently, assuming, — for he never 
loses sight of his grand postulate, — that slavery, 
per se, is necessarily a system of oppression and 
cruelty, he makes Presbyter commit the odious ab- 
surdity of preferring injustice and cruelty to kindness 
and compassion. 

In a less excited state of mind our warm reviewer 
would have spared this invidious rhetoric, and dis- 
cussed his adversary's reasoning as it is, — if he had 
then seen fit to discuss it at all ; — not that, because 
the physical world is disordered, therefore it is right 
3* 



30 



to disorder also the moral and social world, — but, 
that physical, moral, and social- natures are alike dis- 
ordered, and by the same universal cause; — that 
they are all related parts of one comprehensive 
system ; — that, all these related parts, being alike 
upheaved, disjointed, and deranged by sin, it is the 
will of God measurably to control and limit their 
common irregularities, during the present probation- 
ary state of the earth and man ; — that, as it is 
sometimes needful, for security, improvement, and 
life itself, to curb and restrain the disorderly elements 
of the one, so also of the other; — that all this is 
made evident by the records of history, the analogies 
of experience, and, more authoritatively, by natural 
religion, whether traditional, or republished in the 
Holy Scriptures ; — that not only wisdom and justice, 
but goodness and mercy, appear in this, as in all 
other departments of the Divine government ; — that 
all the Divine attributes are equally honored in 
putting ignorant and imbecile men under guardian- 
ship, and the vicious under restraint, against their will, 
when higher interests are at stake, and as well on a 
large scale as a small, — in respect to a race as to an 
individual man; — that it is better to make them 
grind in the mill for their subsistence, and the bene- 
fits of discipline, than to leave them in their natural 
state of hopeless incompetency and savage ferocity ; — 
that the State, God's minister and rejDresentative, is the 



31 



proper judge of occasions for the exercise of its pre- 
rogative, in these respects ; — that these occasions it 
is not more difficult to understand than how to secure 
ourselves against frosts, mildews, and volcanoes ; or the 
ravages of war, pestilence, and famine ; or the disad- 
vantages of ordinary pauperism and crime ; — and 
that it is a part of our providential discipline, in this 
bad world, to do all these analogous things, by appro- 
priate means, and such as God ordains, and to do 
them thoroughly and well, that the ills of this life 
may be as much as possible diminished, till God shall 
remove them, if at all, in some way unknown to 
nature and experience, by removing the cause of 
them in the wickedness and imbecility of man. This 
reasoning is not blind ; and it would not have been 
difficult for the reviewer to have understood it, if he 
had been less impatient of it, or of its natural effect ; 
and he would not then have paraded the absurd 
inference • which he has drawn from it, — that " the 
Saviour, if he had entertained such views, would 
have sent forth strong companies of slave-catchers 
and traders, instead of a few peaceful disciples, 
among the benighted and degraded inhabitants of 
the earth." 

But he would have been likely to have drawn an- 
other and a different inference which evidently he did 
not think of, — that these peaceful disciples, when they 
made converts among the enslaved, would not exhort 



32 



them to manifest their Christian spirit by overturning 
and abolishing an institution intended to restrain and 
discipline incompetent and wicked men, — an institu- 
tion which, notwithstanding their own particular in- 
conveniences and sufferings in it, had raised them 
from the worse condition of barbarians, and brought 
them within reach of the means of grace ; and which 
now would best serve the ends of the Divine govern- 
ment by their submissive and obedient behavior in 
it. He would have recollected, also, that these same 
disciples had acted upon that more natural inference, 
and had authoritatively required of all converted 
slaves to whom the Gospel should ever come, that 
they should be obedient to their own masters who had 
bought them with money, even as to Christ who had 
bought them with blood, ' counting them worthy of 
all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be 
not blasphemed,' not " the good and gentle only, but 
also the fro ward," " where unto also they were 
called ; " — that they had required these precepts 
to be everywhere taught, with exhortation, declar- 
ing " that if any .man teach otherwise he is proud, 
knowing nothing, doting about questions and strifes 
of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil 
surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt 
minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain 
is godliness," i from whom every Christian man should 
withdraw himself He would have better appre- 



33 



ciated the charge of the great Apostle, — " If thou 
mayest be free, use it rather," — it is far better; 
" but, if thou be a slave, care not for it " — stand in 
thy probation ; profit by thy discipline ; ' be content 
with food and raiment,' and you shall soon be a king 
in glory. Those inspired men knew, better than 
their illuminated critics of the present time, what 
belonged to the integrity of natural religion, and its 
relations to a higher dispensation. 

If our reviewer had more carefully considered 
these not unintelligible matters, he would also have 
comprehended what he now professes himself unable 
to fathom; — namely, the reason why, upon the princi- 
ples of Presbyter, the servants of the church should 
not now reduce bad and injurious men to servitude, 
for the peculiar ends of the church; for example, 
their conversion. He would have understood that 
reason to be, because the ends of the church are pecu- 
liar ; because church and State are organized for es- 
sentially different purposes, requiring different admin- 
istrators, and different methods. He would have per- 
ceived the church to be an ecclesia^ — a class of per- 
sons called, supernaturally, out of the State, for pecu- 
liar ends of the Divine government; and that their 
Christian duty, in relation to the State, is, to be an 
example of righteousness whereby the State might be 
kept true to its first and Divine principles, and not 
subject to agitations and overturnings by counter- 



34 



acting its original design. He would have learned 
that Christian men, and ministers of the Gospel, 
would best show their fidelity to the State, and to the 
Lord of all, not by discussing governmental theories 
and puzzles ; not by promulgating mere speculative 
doctrines of liberty, equality, and the rights of man ; 
not by overstepping their sphere to instruct and lead 
the governments of earth ; not by devising plans, 
and multiplying experiments for the better ordering 
of affairs; but by the practical commending of a 
meek and quiet spirit, and the dignified proprieties of 
a godly life ; not by catering to the prejudices and 
passions of uneasy and ambitious partisans, nor by 
vain attempts to sanctify political factions and cabals, 
or the course of civil legislation, by the professed or 
real purity of their religious profession, but by diffus- 
ing among all classes and parties the healthful influ- 
ence of a renewed mind. He would have appre- 
hended that Christianity saves bad men, not by com- 
pelling, but attracting them to the common Re- 
deemer; not by political organizations, but the spirit 
of faith and prayer ; not by fomenting discords and 
divisions, but by recalling the refractory and conten- 
tious to the duties of natural religion, through a su- 
perinduced principle of Christian love. He would 
have better considered that the church, when it has 
called in vain upon evil-doers to be reconciled to God, 
must then leave the State to secure its own safety 



55 



agreeably to the prescripts of its natural institution. 
He would have judged, with a better appreciation of 
government and law, that men have no natural 
rights independent of their duties to God, and to one 
another ; no authorized freedom from restraints with- 
out which they would perish in inactivity and want, or 
bite and devour one another, or exterminate the better 
portions of mankind. God has not so left the world ; 
nor is it consistent with his will that any theories of 
human liberty, or any consequent stirrings of senti- 
ments and sympathies which, as things are, would 
naturally reduce the world to such a state, should 
have countenance from Christian and patriotic men. 
Bad enough all society is, and bad enough its natural 
institutions are likely to become, in the decline inci- 
dent to all things human, in the present state ; but, at 
the worst, they are better than would be the want of 
them, or than the wild attempts of ignorant, corrupt, 
and infatuated men to construct other forms, regard- 
less of the principles of natural religion, and the in- 
ductions of a world-wide experience. The Scripture, 
echoing the voice of natural religion, finds terms 
enough in which to condemn oppressors, and de- 
nounce upon them the righteous judgments of 
heaven. But all language would fail to describe the 
horrors of a general anarchy, or the worse confusions 
of an universal Babel. Such a catastrophe, however, 
can never happen. God is too merciful; and has 



36 



otherwise ordained. He will cast down the guilty 
thrones of earth, and consume tyrants and oppressors 
with fiery judgments, to introduce the dominion of 
the King of kings ; but he will not leave mankind in 
general to the wildfire of their ungodly passions. 

Presbyter respects the generous sympathies of his 
fraternal reviewer, and still more his many better 
qualities of mind and heart. Had they been directed 
by a different class of studies, regulated by more dis- 
passionate reflection, and chastened by a less positive 
and dogmatic spirit, they would have given a health- 
ier tone to his mental activity, and contributed to a 
safer use of his official influence. If, instead of kind- 
ling at the heresies and hardness of heart supposed to 
be evinced in the letter of Presbyter, he had pursued 
more deeply the inquiries suggested by it, he would 
have gained, in that now so much neglected field of 
ministerial research, more instructive and affecting 
views of the Divine counsels, and corresponding ex- 
citements to a more evangelical benevolence. Natu- 
ral religion would have taught him deeper mysteries 
of providence, and revelation higher purposes of 
moral government. He would have better compre- 
hended the present disordered state of the earth and 
man, and that illustrious prophetic future- 'when the 
whole groaning and travailing creation shall be de- 
livered from its bondage of corruption into the glori- 
ous liberty of the children of God.' 



37 



2. From Revealed Religion. 

To Presbyter's inquiries under this head, our con- 
siderate reviewer objects, — that slavery cannot be 
an ordinance of Scripture because its alleged scrip- 
tural formulas do not correspond to his ideas and 
definitions of the institution. Slavery, in his view, 
and according to his ever recurring postulate, is 
essentially and entirely evil, and its scriptural author- 
ity could not be admitted, without a formula as 
express as that of the passover, or baptism, or the 
Lord's supper. 

The solecism here involved is of little consequence. 
It is, doubtless, an inadvertency. But it is of conse- 
quence to maintain the principle which the objection 
overlooks, that the will of God is supreme and author- 
itative, however it be declared in his word. It is not 
for us to prescribe with what forms, or in what terms, 
he shall make known his will. We are competent 
judges, a priori, neither of what God should ordain, 
nor how he should ordain it; and to object, after- 
wards, that any published institution of his is incredi- 
ble because, in either or both of these respects, it is 
inconsistent with our ideas of right or fitness, is to 
sit in judgment upon his wisdom, and is a virtual 
abnegation of his authority. Upon such a principle 
Abraham would not have attained to the blessings of 
the covenant ; Lot would have perished in the burn- 
ing Sodom; and the Israelites would have found 
4 



38 



their graves on the shores of the Red Sea. There is 
no higher. court than that of heaven. An appeal 
from that to an inner light of taste or conscience, is 
unbelief. But it is greater folly ; for whose taste, or 
whose conscience shall be the umpire ? It results in 
utter confusion, or in submission to the strongest arm. 
It breeds infidelity and anarchy first, and ends in 
civil and religious despotism. It makes a short stay 
at Paris, and pitches its tent at Rome. But it is 
atheistic everywhere. 

It is not less to be observed that, between those 
institutions which stand in natural religion, — that is, 
those by which God carries on his government of 
the world according to nature, and those other insti- 
tutions which are supernatural, and peculiar to the 
ccclesia, there is an essential difference, and God 
makes a corresponding difference in their formulas 
of appointment. The ordinances of the church are 
first constituted and announced by Scripture. They 
require, of course, special formality answerable to 
their supernatural design. The ordinances of the 
State are anterior. The Scripture finds them as 
they have existed for generations, gives them its 
simple recognition, and modifies them to suit the 
exigencies of a new economy. This is enough to 
settle their Divine authority ; and God does no more 
than is sufficient to his purpose. He commits no 
superfluity of legislation. Whatever ordinance of 



39 



natural religion we find acknowledged, confirmed, 
and regulated by the written word, is as truly 
Divine, as if it had its origin in the Revelations, and 
is as positively obligatory, in its order, upon the 
conscience of mankind. It stands above the criti- 
cism of our faculties. It is simply for our faith. If 
God, in the Scripture, admits and owns an antecedent 
natural ordinance ; if he refers to its antecedent 
history as an exponent of his will in his general 
natural government ; if he declares, prophetically, 
that it shall subsist a given length of time, or during 
the existence of particular persons, nations, or races 
upon the earth, or indefinitely ; if he prescribes, by 
express and positive legislation, how it shall be 
administered in general, or, in specific instances, 
dispenses formal rules for it in reference to certain 
specific ends ; if, in successive periods, he enacts, 
occasionally, precepts adapted to the particular con- 
ditions of the parties concerned in it, or connected 
with it ; if he annuls it not before its appointed time, 
nor at all, nor condemns it, nor gives the least inti- 
mation that it should be abolished ; if he actually 
and historically treats the respective parties according 
to their behavior in it ; and explicitly rebukes and 
condemns all intermeddle rs with it, and with other 
related institutions, ' as proud, knowing nothing, 
despisers of authority, and speaking evil of things 



40 



they understand not ; ' — it must certainly be very 
presumptuous to question such an ordinance, to 
oppose it, to conspire against it, and move heaven 
and earth to effect its overthrow because it does not 
answer to our a priori ideas, or our speculative 
notions in regard to the best way of governing the 
world ; or because it was not set up with terms and 
definitions agreeable to our favorite hypotheses, or 
our plans for the reformation of society, or the 
opinions of our particular school, or sect ; or because 
its practical working falls short, in our judgment, of 
its theoretical design, and disappoints our expecta- 
tions ; or because the world makes a bad use of it, 
and thereby aggravates personal injuries or social 
irregularities, baffling our reckonings of human pro- 
gress, or our predictions of a perfect state. It is a 
poor compliment to Scripture, and to the author of 
it, to reduce it thus to the measure of our conceits 
and speculations ; and great impiety to pretend that 
Scripture, when thus contrary to our notions, is a 
curse to mankind, and ought to be rejected, as some 
wise men have very unwisely affirmed. It argues a 
great exasperation and recklessness of the self-will, 
and is more hazardous than such presumptuous 
persons imagine to their stability in the faith, and 
their beneficial influence in society. There is no 
variety of scepticism that has not its origin in this 



41 



vanity of human conceit. It is the historical and 
prophetical cause of all the past, present, and future 
apostasies of the church, and revolutions of the State. 

To these first principles Presbyter directed the 
inquiry of his brethren ; and he doubts not that 
they, and particularly the reviewer, would have found 
no small advantage from keeping them diligently in 
mind, instead of shunning and evading them. For 
they admit of an easy application to the question of 
slavery now in hand, and open up the whole body of 
argument from Scripture in support of it. Slavery 
is but the objective form of them, and as necessary 
to them as body is to soul in constituting a perfect 
man. The Scripture testifies to the whole series of 
historical and prophetical facts which are their natu- 
ral exponent, and vindicates, both in the facts and 
principles, the holy government of God. 

Thus: — the hand of inspiration points us, with 
unmistakable precision, to the subjection of mankind 
in general to the toil and sweat of slaving the earth, 
upheaved, deranged, cursed with thorns and thistles, 
vexed by terraqueous and atmospheric irregularities, 
plagued with pestilences and famines, rocked by per- 
petual convulsions, and "reserved unto fire against 
the day of judgment, and the perdition" of ungodly 
men," — on account of the sin of their progenitors; — 
to the subsequent banishment, stigma, social inferiority, 
and civil disability of the murderous Cain ; — to the 
4* 



42 



proscription and alienation of his posterity in their 
generations; — to the judgments which fell succes- 
sively upon the descendants of Abel for intercourse 
and intermarriage with the proscribed and accursed 
race, till the earth was deluged on account of violat- 
ing an ordinance which God had judged necessary to 
the preservation of virtue, and the continuance of a 
social state ; — to the unnatural crime of Ham, at 
the outset of a new experiment and dispensation 
upon the repeopled earth ; — to the consequent pro- 
phetic malediction of Noah upon this degenerate son, 
corresponding .to the previous curse of Cain, dooming 
his posterity, definitely and indefinitely, to perpetual 
servitude to his more virtuous brethren, and making 
his degradation subservient to their social enlarge- 
ment, as an everlasting memorial in vindication of 
the righteous government of God ; — to the historical 
fulfilment of that prophetic curse in all the subse- 
quent periods of Jewish and Christian history, verify- 
ing the Divine Word in a long course of signal provi- 
denceseq ually with respect to the Hamitic, Semitic, 
and Japhetic nations down to the present day, and 
calling the attention of the world, to this perpetual 
sign of God's personality and active rule among the 
children of men, through all the vicissitudes of human 
affairs; — to the authorized enslaving of imbecile and 
dangerous men by the patriarchs, in all periods, till 
the giving of the law, in token of the Divine purpose 



43 



to preserve society, measurably, henceforth, from the 
evils which had brought the flood upon the earth; — 
to the specific commands of God to the Israelites to 
reduce their barbarous and ungodly neighbors to 
bondage, in subserviency to the Divine purpose of 
sequestering that nation, as his peculiar property, till 
Japheth should come into possession of the tents of 
Shem; — to the repeated enslaving of the Jews 
themselves, by Divine appointment, and in fulfilment 
of Divine predictions, for their conformity to those 
vile practices for which they had been commanded 
to enslave their heathen neighbors, — all setting forth 
the jealous care of the Divine providence lest society 
should be broken up, in derogation of the Divine cov- 
enant, and the derangement of the Divine plan con- 
cerning the future Messianic ages; — to the judg- 
ments of God upon the Jews when they abused 
this ordinance to the oppression of the heathen whom 
they were required to reduce, and privileged to buy 
and sell, for the better ordering of the State ; and to 
similar judgments upon the heathen when they in- 
flicted like abuses upon the captive Jews ; — to the 
existence and severe abuses of slavery in the time of 
Christ and the Apostles, their unqualified recognition 
of the ordinance, and equally unqualified reprobation 
of its abuses, and to their express and often repeated 
injunctions upon both masters and slaves whereby the 
ordinance would be made more subservient to its nat- 



44 



ural design ; —r- and to all this without the slightest 
intimation in the Old Testament or the New, as if 
slavery were a necessary and unmitigated evil, or in- 
consistent with any natural rights of man, or contrary 
to any dictates of justice, benevolence, prudence, or 
propriety ; — but, contrarily implying, with irresisti- 
ble significancy, that any such intimation, on any 
such pretended grounds of natural rights, justice, be- 
nevolence, prudence, or propriety, would be absurd, 
contradictory to all the known methods and histori- 
cal records of the Divine government over the fallen 
world, and not to be thought of by any Christian 
man, or even any mere philanthropist who would 
justify his title to such a name, in carrying on this 
wild and distracted natural scene before the predicted 
day of its supernatural restitution. 

In the same line of reasoning it is also evident, and 
of great consequence to be observed, that the same 
Divine will which ordained slavery as an important 
variety of government over degenerate men, has. also 
benignantly guarded it, in its own proper order, and 
equally under natural and revealed religion, by the 
remaining sympathies and charities of our fallen 
nature; by our natural sense of order, decorum, 
propriety, utility ; by our humane and patriotic feel- 
ings ; by the conveniences and comforts of domestic 
life ; by the force of public opinion, and the greater 
stress of conscientious fear; by express precepts of 



45 



the Scripture, and the general obligations which it 
imposes upon all superiors in place and office ; and, 
in fine, by whatever checks, restraints, or induce- 
ments pertain to the nature of man and the social 
state ; — that express and specific judgments are also 
denounced upon all who should abuse their preroga- 
tive, and lord it over their subject and abject fellow- 
creatures for the indulgence of their own passions ; 
and that God has, sometimes, for example to the 
world, actually subjected such lordly tyrants to the 
very indignities which they had wantonly inflicted 
upon their inferiors and dependants, and even to the 
lower condition of brute beasts — to eat grass like 
oxen, — till tlie holy sovereignty of God was vindica- 
ted, and his righteous government was acknowledged. 
But, though the Scriptural formulas of slavery be 
different, for the reasons above suggested, from those 
of ecclesiastical institutions, which have a super- 
natural origin, and a corresponding guarded limita- 
tion, they are not different from those of other 
natural ordinances republished in Scripture, and 
whose Divine authority is consequently admitted by 
all Christian men. For example ; — the institution 
of the family, and of the State in general. — except- 
ing only the theocratic nation of the Jews, — stand 
on the same Scriptural basis with slavery ; that is, 
they are similarly recognized, confirmed, made the 
subject of general legislation, and of express and 



46 



positive precepts to the parties concerned in them. 
We look in vain, in Scripture, for any such precise 
commands in respect to any one of them, or such 
definitions and limitations, as we find concerning the 
passover, the apostolical commission, the eucharist, or 
other ordinance merely appropriate to a new eccle- 
siastical discipline. Consistency requires, accordingly, 
the acceptance of them all similarly, as Divine insti- 
tutions; and the rejection of any one of them, 
would, consistently, require the rejection of the 
whole. This is well understood by those who are 
committed to follow their anti-slavery ideas, at all 
hazards ; and they behave accordingly. Whatever 
may be thought of the principles of these infatuated 
men, they deserve well for their straightforward logic, 
and for never balking at natural conclusions. We 
should be tempted to admire their boldness, if we 
did not know it to be the effect of madness, in con- 
signing, as they do, the family, State, church, with 
their respective degrees, prerogatives, and ordinances, 
to the same grave of antiquated superstitions — the 
alleged contrivance of kings and priests to hamper 
the aspiring intellect, and arrest the natural progress 
of society. Our better reviewer, if he would not 
choose to be classed with these more liberated philan- 
thropists, and come out, at length, in a similar dis- 
honor, should be careful not to put himself in their 
curriculum ; for a logical necessity, with reins in 
hand, it is very difficult to control. 



47 

This remarkable drift of Scripture, in concurrence 
with natural religion, it is, of course, an arduous 
undertaking to withstand. It is easier to evade it ; 
and evasion is the familiar alternative of those who 
are not yet prepared to renounce the Divine 
authority of Revelation. Their ingenuity, in this 
respect, is worthy of a better cause. It is never at a 
loss, when a seeming opportunity occurs, to suggest a 
convenient contrary interpretation, or a questionable 
fact of history ; a mooted point in ethnology, a pro- 
fessional problem, or a fifth, tenth, twentieth, or a 
figurative, instead of the natural and primary mean- 
ing of a Scripture term;* an array of onesided 

* Our speculative reformers make very convenient use of philology and 
criticism in support of their hypotheses. In their hands a dictionary is as 
supple as a rod, -which, if it had not a reflex action, through its natural 
tendency to a perpendicular, might permanently serve their turns. But it 
reacts, and smites them ; for, though it is easy to multiply accommodated 
and figurative meanings of a term, it is difficult to conceal the original and 
legitimate meaning, or to prove that meaning not applicable where God 
hjas made it so. When that violence is used, nature and Scripture resume 
their prerogatives, and avenge their wrongs. 

An instance occurs in the Bibliotheca Sacra for October. An ingenious 
■writer would there convince us, by some display of learning, that " the 
word used for servant, or bondservant, in the Hebrew Scriptures," does 
not mean slavery. He is careful enough, like our reviewer, to say 
" slavery according to its modern definition." But he would have his 
readers understand, that slavery, without a qualification, has no warrant 
from the Scripture. That is the object of his article. 

But if the writer had pursued his inquiries more extensively, and upon 
a more scientific method, he would have come out in directly opposite 



48 



statistics, or the authority of a great name; a 
scholastic theory, a political puzzle, or a declaration 

conclusions. And those opposite conclusions would have been just, 
because consistent with the principles of language ; the peculiar idioms 
of Scripture ; its general theology and ethics ; and the facts of sacred 
and profane history ; — which cannot be said of his present speculations. 

In all languages we find a word answering to our English word slave, 
and expressing the same meaning; namely, bondman, bondservant, one 
subject to a master, — the master's property legitimated according to 
the common laws and usages of property. This word is traceable, 
through all the languages, up to the original Hebrew, being the common 
denominator of a relation actually existing in all nations from the earliest 
periods of which we have any historical records. There is no period in 
which we do not find the account of persons so held in bondage as the 
possession, the goods, the " money," of their lawfully constituted owners 
and proprietors. Accordingly there is no time in which we do not find 
the word. We find the word' because this relation subsists, and*a proper 
term is needed to express it. The tiling requires the name, and the name 
signifies and indicates the thing. From time immemorial, the word which 
answers to our slave, means a slave, and nothing else, except by figure and 
accommodation which nobody practically misunderstands. An ebed at 
Jerusalem ; a doulos at Athens ; a servos at Rome ; and a slave at 
Washington, have been as well understood, in those respective representa- 
tive cities, to mean a chattel personal, as son has been understood to 
mean the child of his father, and for the same reason, namely, the actual 
subsistence of the relation denoted by it, though both these terms have 
had numerous accommodated and figurative applications, enough to give 
the largest scope to fanciful philologists. 

If we inquire why this particular word has always been used to denote 
this particular relation, we find the account of it at the setting up of the 
world, when man became "sold under sin," an ebed — a slave to the 
great adversary, and to his own lusts and passions ; — a slave to the earth, 
condemned to toil and sweat for bread ; a slave to death, the bondage of 
the dust out of which he was created ; a slave of slaves, for the earth itself, 
cursed for man's sake, remaineth, and groaneth, and travaileth in pain, till 



49 



of independence ; a conjecture, a quibble, a sarcasm, 
or personal reproach ; — concluding always by an 

the palingennesia, when ' the creature shall be delivered from its bondage of 
corruption' The word is applied to the race gencricalhj, from the begin- 
ning, because it is ' taken captive,' ' sold,' ' bound,' ' subject,' ' enslaved' by 
evil; and, specifically, onwards, to such portions of it as most fail to profit 
by the advantages of a probationary state, and require restraint and 
discipline, till " the times of restitution." The whole chain hangs down 
from the throne of God ; and a child may follow it, link by link. The 
child will not mistake till he goes to school, and is puzzled by self-inter- 
ested and partisan expounders. Our friend of the Bibllotheca has been 
to school, and is confused by the jargon. If he will return to simplicities, ' 
" as a little child," he will see it all; and he will make the greatest attain- 
ment of earth, — deliverance from the slavery of scholastic subtleties into 
the freedom. of natural and revealed religion. 

It is time that the Scripture should not be made to speak, for party 
purposes, what it does not mean. The laws of language are laws of God. 
and should no more be bent from their integrity, for the ends of an 
hypothesis, or the interests of a party, than the laws of material nature, 
or the ten commandments. If we so bend them, they will return and 
smite us. 

Not many years ago, our subtle theorists of social reform expended, 
after the same fashion, whatever philological and critical learning they 
could command, to convince the country that wine, " according to its 
modern definition," is as much unknown to Scripture as they now pre- 
tend of slavery ; and that it ought, therefore, to be abolished, even from 
the Lord's table. And they convinced many to whom what is printed is 

always, of course, true, if it be ■ on their side of the question. What 

is printed on the other side could not profit them, for they do not read it. 
It is too old-fashioned. Or, they read it only by their improved lights. 

Had our churches fallen into the snare thus laid for them, their " pro- 
gress," by this time, could only have been measured by a galvanic 
standard. They would have become spiritual to the last degree of 
" odvlic force." They would have been able to " swallow camels," till the 
reign of pharisaism had become absolute and universal. Wonderful 

5 



50 

appeal to their unfailing dogma, — the hard-ridden 
hobby that bears them through all the vicissitudes of 
their crusade, — that slavery, being necessarily evil, 
and the parent of all abominations, must, of course, be 
abhorrent td the mind of God, — which, however, is 
nothing to their purpose, since it begs the question in 
dispute. Our reviewer is not unskilled in these tac- 
tics of controversial warfare. But it would have 
been more satisfactory to unprejudiced inquirers, that 
he should rather have shown the unsoundness of his 
adversary's principles of reasoning, or the falseness 
of its elements, or tlfe defectiveness of its process, or 
the inconsequence of its conclusions, or its inconsis- 
tency, in general, with other admitted verities of 
Scripture, and the teachings of experience. This 

would have been their array of ' shining cups and platters.' What these 
vessels, " clean " on the outside, would have contained, must be imagined. 
In like manner philology, and other sciences equally complaisant and 
pliable, have undertaken to instruct us in respect to cosmological interpre- 
tation. Our theorists have found Moses as accommodating in respect to 
physics, as to ethics and theology : and they have accordingly felt them- 
selves at liberty to make and unmake, as well as to carry on worlds, at 
their own pleasure. An expert, with aid of pen and ink, may construct 
a world, or a system, in less than six days, and all very rjood. Or, Moses 
is understood to be indifferent whether worlds were created at all, 
provided a Divinity be acknowledged ready to arrange the material 
eternally furnished to his plastic hand. It may yet be proved that he 
believed in no Divinity at all. Humanity, of course, will then be entirely 
disenthralled, and may have a free course unto perfection, — when worlds, 
systems, minds, and whatever else has heretofore been imagined within the 
circles of existence, will be revolved into — one great idea. 



51 



had been far better than to have made merely 
collateral issues, and supported them by questionable 
interpretations, unnatural inferences, groundless as- 
sumptions, invidious references, and partisan appeals. 

But what he has done, with some show of reason, 
is a proper subject of analysis and criticism. 

1. The reviewer, in his published article, does not 
take the common ground of objectors, that the curse 
of Noah was a mere drunken and vindictive impreca- 
tion. He is too reverent for that. He admits that it 
was, in some sense, prophetic. But he denies that 
the conduct of Ham was, in any sense, representa- 
tive, or that his descendants were, in any way, im- 
plicated in it. The denial is unqualified and unsus- 
tained. Of course, it amounts to a mere expression 
of the writer's opinion. But it is incredible, because 
the prophetic curse was pronounced in view of the 
offence of Ham. His crime alone figured in the 
prophet's mind. That, and nothing else, is intimated 
as the ground of the malediction. The crime and 
the curse have been followed, through all periods, by 
the predicted judgments upon the family of Ham, 
and consequent enlargements of Shem and Japheth. 
The church has, consequently, always acknowledged 
this plenary evidence of the Divine justice and 
veracity, and the world has been restrained, more or 
less, by the terrible admonition. In view of these 
facts, the reviewer's mere opinion is worthless. In 



52 



view of corresponding analogies of the Divine gov- 
ernment, it is worse ; for one might with equal and 
similar reason, according to the speculative theology 
out of which most of these novelties have proceeded, 
deny that Adam was the representative of mankind 
in general ; that the entail of toil and sweat, pain, 
sickness, and death, was declared, and has been 
executed as the penalty of the first transgression ; — 
that the crucifiers of Christ represented the nation 
of the Jews ; or that their consequent overthrow and 
dispersion were the ordained infliction of the curse 
which they imprecated upon themselves and upon 
their children ; — or that the sanction of the fifth 
commandment has any virtue by which social pros- 
perity becomes the reward of filial piety, and the 
earth is contrarily cursed with the shortlived and 
pestilent generations of such as dishonor their father 
and their mother. Such similitudes, of which sacred 
and profane records are full, must go for nothing, 
exponents though they are of a principle which God 
has written, as with a sunbeam, on the sky. We 
must forget the old family Bible, and the catechism, 
and go, for our learning, to socialistic communions, 
cosmopolitan theories, and mesmeric revelations. 
We must take our risks of being bewildered in 
a labyrinth of sophistries and follies, from which 
the shattered intellect will presently be unable, even 
if we would, to find deliverance. 



53 



2. That our reviewer is already in such a clanger 
appears from his objection that "the prophetic an- 
nouncement of an impending curse was made with 
exclusive reference to Canaan, including, of course, 
his posterity to some limited extent." The evident 
implication here is, that the iniquity of the father 
was visited upon the children in their generations, 
though the visitation was restricted to a single line, 
and limited in duration. Be it so : but then what 
becomes of the previous denial that the children 
were implicated at all in the bad conduct of their 
father ; or that any relation of stated antecedent and 
consequent existed between the crime of the one 
and the punishment of the other? Our author 
surrenders his own principle. His objections neu- 
tralize each other. 

But how knows he that Canaan and his posterity 
were alone in the suffering of the curse ? There is 
no evidence that Canaan was yet born when Noah 
pronounced the malediction. The offended sire 
looked only upon the son who had dishonored him. 
He would naturally apply to him the epithet most 
significant of his general character, and the quality 
of his particular misdemeanor. That particular 
offence spoke for itself. His general character had 
been indicated before by his intermarriage with the 
accursed race of Cain, laying a foundation, as it did, 
for the social evils which would thence naturally 
5* 



54 



ensue upon the repeopled earth. Did Noah want an 
epithet to denote the whole ? Canaan was the word. 
It signified, after the idiom of those times, the Garn- 
ish propensities, the Cainish associations, the Cainish 
act, and the Cainish influence of his ungodly son. 
Canaan was the proper denominator of the tainted 
blood that should infect so many of the future 
inhabitants of the world. — Or, if it were that Noah 
had in mind that particular son of Ham who should 
bear the name of Canaan, at a future day, yet, 
possibly, only because Canaan would inherit most of 
his parent's qualities, and be signalized, not exclusively, 
but emphatically, as deserving of the curse. Learned 
men have been divided upon these interpretations; 
and more have followed those great authorities — the 
Arabic and Septuagmt translators, — who supply an 
idiomatic ellipsis, and read " the father of Canaan," 
as in other verses of the same chapter. Of these 
and other renderings, the inquiries of Presbyter would 
have opened to the reviewer probabilities at least as 
valuable as his unsupported assertion in denial of 
them all. — But, however, they are all of no conse- 
quence in reference to the question in dispute. For, 
if ' Canaan only and his posterity to some extent ' 
were in the condemnation, the Divine right of 
slavery is thereby established. God, by his prophet, 
entails upon some descendants of Ham servitude. 
But servitude implies mastership, and is impossible 



55 



without it. If there be slaves, or God's will cannot 
be done, and his word must fail, there must be slave- 
holders also, by equal reason ; and, if slaveholding 
be necessarily a sin, then God imposes a necessity 
upon some good men of sinning, in executing his 
righteous judgments upon some bad men; — which 
is absurd. We reject that absurd conclusion, and 
adjudge the slaveholder, like all other officers of the 
Divine government, guilty, not for his formal act by 
which he executes a Divine decree, but for the 
spirit by which he abuses his trust to the indulgence 
of his malignant passions. Otherwise he honors God, 
and is a benefactor of society. If Shem and Japheth 
necessarily sin in executing the prophetic curse, 
where is the blessing of their filial piety, and what 
encouragement has any man to copy it ? 

3. The reviewer also objects that " the curse of 
Canaan was long ago exhausted, partly, when the 
Canaanites were subdued by the Israelites, and, com- 
pletely, when the remnants of the tribes in Canaan 
fell under the dominion of the Romans." If it were 
so, it would be nothing to his purpose. It would 
prove not that slavery is wrong, but that having 
answered its providential design, in respect to that 
particular family, it naturally ceased ; or that, because 
they could not be reclaimed by discipline, a heavier 
judgment had come upon them in their destruction. 

But the reviewer's opinion is without foundation. 



56 



It has not even a probable support. The evidence is 
on the other side. For, how was the curse exhausted ? 
By express limitation in the prophecy itself? Not at 
all. That stands equally related to Shem and Japhet 
in their generations. It emphatically points to the 
enlargement of Japheth, after he should take pos- 
session of the tents of Shem. As Shem, in his 
probationary period, so Japheth in his period, is the 
prophetic master of his sinning brother ; and Japheth 
still rules the world. Was it limited by any subse- 
quent revelations ? Not at all ; but is continually 
recognized in Scripture clown to the time of Christ. 
Tlie New Testament confirms it, and directs masters 
and slaves how to behave, in their respective spheres, 
till the day of the Lord. Was it limited by the 
destruction of its victims on the part of the Jews 
and Romans ? Not at all : for the histories relate that 
the exterminated Canaanites fled, in all directions, to 
the wilds of Africa, and, as evidence is not wanting, 
with their Cainish mark upon them. They spread 
themselves over the vast regions of that burning 
country, built great cities, made great wars, enslaved 
one another ; and what else they did, and what they 
have become, the world is finding but by every new 
discovery. Down to the fourth century the Africans 
referred their origin to the Canaanites, and made 
that origin still more evident by their vile behavior. 
There they have lived, and, with such beautiful 



57 



exceptions as God is wont to make among the most 
degraded of mankind, have followed the pattern of 
their obscene and impious progenitor. There his sin 
has found them out, and Japheth has taken possession 
of his inheritance. He will hold it while he dwells 
in the tents of Shem, — till Jerusalem, in the fulness 
of time, shall become the seat of universal govern- 
ment, and the Abrahamic covenant shall be fulfilled, 
in giving all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory 
of them, to The Son of David. 

With what spirit, and for what ends, and in what 
manner, Japheth uses his ordained prerogative, he 
must take good heed, or from his Nebuchadnezzar 
heights of secular enlargement, and material civiliza- 
tion, he will fall to a brutish level. It is possible 
that he should so build his Babylon as to provoke 
heavier judgments than those of old, and that, for 
the abuse of the "slaves and souls of men" that are 
found in it, with other countless varieties of lawful 
but prostituted merchandise, it should be cast like a 
great millstone into the sea, — that prophetic symbol 
of popular revolution, anarchy, and destruction. 
But, equally in the righteous ordinance of slavery, 
and in the overthrow of the guilty nations who 
pervert it to evil, or abolish it, instead of making it 
subservient to its design, God will establish the 
veracity of his word, and vindicate the integrity of 
.his moral government. "Is there unrighteousness 



58 



with God ? God forbid ! Yea, let God be true, but 
every man be made a liar." And this great lesson 
of the Scripture should be well studied in reference 
to the superstition of the South, and the fanaticism 
of the more erring North, which, otherwise, in their 
violent reciprocal repulsion, may meet on the other 
side, to dash one another in pieces. Dark, in this 
respect, is the problem of the future. Old men 
should not be scorned because they are afraid ; and 
young men should not too confidently reckon upon 
their ability to arrest the laws of nature, and roll 
back the tide of providence. But ministers of the 
Gospel should take care how they place themselves, 
in reference to the threatening conflict of these 
exasperated earthly forces. The propagators of 
Christianity should look out. There are grave 
questions occasionally before them that ought not to 
be decided at a late hour of the night.* 

But, in respect to this question of the Scripture 
authority of slavery, our reviewer would have been 

* Allusion is made above to the action of the American Board of 
Commissioners FOR Foreign Missions — at its meeting in 1854 — 
on the Choctaw question. Great interests were then put in great jeopardy. 
Even that dignified and excellent body — a tower of popular strength — 
could not bear many such shocks as it then received by the vote of the 
majority. The question now sleeps. But it will awake for other discus- 
sions, and, it is to be hoped, for different judgments. Whenever the 
time comes, many will be urgent that the voices of such men as then con- 
stituted the minority of the Board, may not be heard in vain. 



■59 



more likely to convince others, if he had been better 
able to convince himself. Zealous though he be, he 
is evidently but half persuaded in his own mind. 
The difficulties of Scripture trouble him, as they 
have troubled so many of his school, and tasked all 
their ingenuity of interpretation. For example ; — 
he touches very softly upon the servants of Abra- 
ham — the representative of the patriarchal econ- 
omy, — as in some sense obtained by money, yet not 
as the patriarch's slaves, but "Ms people;" or, if 
bought, yet not sold by him ; or, if bought and sold, 
yet not "in the American sense;" and not in the' 
American sense, because that would prove the father 
of the faithful to have been preeminently wicked, 
which, though possible, and, on the reviewer's princi- 
ples, certain, if he were a slaveholder, yet is not the 
character in which it is most natural to contemplate 
that venerable man. Such expedients indicate that 
our author feels a pressure, and seeks relief by 
changes of position ; as when one would shift a 
burden from one shoulder to the other, or transfer it 
to his arms, or carry it in his hand, or place it on the 
next conveyance, as the exigency should require. 
But none of these expedients are, ultimately, to his 
purpose ; for, when we inquire how this money of 
the patriarch was applied, it appears not to have been 
in the form of wages to the servants, but of price to 
their former masters. Being, consequently, thence- 



60 



forth, the property of their new owner, it is of no 
consequence whether they be called his slaves, or 
".his people." A mere name, though technically 
convenient, affects nothing in respect to principle. 
Or, if it be admitted that Abraham never sold his 
slaves, that also is not material ; for, if he bought, 
another must have sold, and his right to buy involves 
another's right to sell, so that between the two contract- 
ing parties the principle is established. Or, if these 
" people " were not slaves " in the American sense," that 
also touches not the issue ; for the only question 
here is whether they were slaves at all? Presbyter is 
not aware that there is any American, or other acci- 
dental sense of slavery, that affects the essential 
validity of the relation, which is simply referable to 
the will of God, is independent of all geographical, 
political, and philosophical considerations whatsoever, 
and irrespective of the moral character of the parties 
concerned in it, except as, in particular cases, they 
are decreed, upon regular judicial process, to have 
violated their obligations, and thereby forfeited their 
rights. But such exceptional cases, or any supposable 
multiplication of them, that should turn the excep- 
tion into the rule, would not touch the system of 
slavery, but its abuses by wicked men ; and any 
consequent judicial process could not rightfully abol- 
ish the system, but their particular connection with it. 
Nor could these abuses properly bear the stigma of 



61 



American, for they belong not necessarily to the 
country more than to the system, but to human 
nature ; and, though described justly, after the manner 
of the reviewer, by the stealing, maiming, shooting, or 
burning of the slaves, could not be limited to time or 
place, for these and similar atrocities have been com- 
mitted by bad men in all ages and countries of the 
world. Such barbarities were, in fact, contemplated, 
beforehand, by God himself, in his giving of the law, 
and the proper punishments were prescribed ; — 
which clearly indicated his will that the system 
itself, at all these fearful hazards, or rather, in his 
certain knowledge of such resulting incidental evils, 
should be maintained. So that slavery, in distinc- 
tion from its abuses, stands in Scripture ; and he who 
would abolish it, without a warrant, or while the 
natural reasons for it continue, violates an ordinance 
of God. He may be a good man, and sincere ; but 
he mistakes his calling. He is blinded by an idol ; 
and he propagates his idolatry at a risk which, in his 
bewilderment, he could not reckon, of the safety of 
the State. That so many good men should be so 
committed, as now, inconsiderately, to such delusions, 
and feel themselves, consequently, obliged to give 
popular currency to their mistakes and fallacies, 
constitutes the greatest of our public dangers. 

III. The Test : — The Lmv of Love. 

" God is love ! " — a remarkable affirmation of the 
6 



62 



Scripture; and its meaning is remarkable. We look 
for it, by distinguishing the subject from its qualities. 
God is not called holiness, or justice, or goodness, or ' 
truth. These are his attributes. His essence, so far 
as declared to us, is love ; and these attributes are 
modes of its manifestation to his creatures. They 
are its objective forms exhibited in his government of 
the world. Love has no adjective but a. participial, 
which represents the exercise of all the Divine attri- 
butes in glorious harmony. It is the simple, indivisi- 
ble, indefinable, incomprehensible denominator of 
the Father of all. 

" The end of the commandment is love." Natural 
and revealed religion is the fruit and expression of 
this Divine principle, intended to bind men to God 
and to one another. The vinculum is love, not of 
constraint, but of attraction and affinity. Religion 
flows out of this incomprehensible spirit, and returns 
to it. Love constitutes, essentially, its binding power. 
It is its .test, and the test of every ordinance and 
institution that claim the sanction of its authority. 
Hereby we know them. All things are referable to 
this only true and absolute standard of virtue. All 
real, in distinction from formal and apparent virtue, 
consists in it, and is measured by it. Without it, all 
forms are void, and all apparent excellence is but " as 
sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." All mechanisms 
and organizations are good or bad only as they are 



63 



moved by this vital spring, or by hate its opposite. 
It is the test of slavery. If slavery cannot stand its 
criticism, it is the greatest of social evils, and should 
be destroyed. How, when, by whom, are questions 
of prudence and expediency that would require the 
greatest wisdom. But. it ought to be destroyed. If 
those to whom its destruction naturally, or by express 
Divine appointment, belonged, should refuse to destroy 
it, they would be themselves destroyed. Love itself 
would destroy them ; for love is the greatest of all 
destroyers when it meets the resisting antagonism 
of hate, — as the subtle lifegiving caloric sometimes 
upheaves the solid earth, and lays waste its cities. 
" God is love." But " God is a consuming fire." "A 
fire goeth before him, and burnetii up his enemies 
round about ; " — always a fire of. love, but objectively 
displayed in executing judgment and justice upon 
those whom his wisdom could not convince, nor his 
holiness awe, nor his goodness soften. It is the 
terrible proof of the evil of all sin and transgression, 
which are not abstractions and mere conceptions, but 
characteristics of voluntary and accountable beings, 
that they are contrary to the infinitely loving God, 
and that their subjection, restraint, and punishment 
are required in vindication of his holy sovereignty. 

The account of this, as revealed by religion, and 
which, as it could not otherwise have been reasoned 
out, ambitious naturalism, in all its types, rejects, is — 



64 



that God having this infinite perfection as a moral gov- 
ernor, the only worthy end of his government is the 
manifestation of his own glory. The happiness of 
creatures who are infinitely below him, and depend- 
ent upon him, could not, as mere humanitarianism 
and philanthropy propose, be- his end, but only a 
stated consequence of their being like him, having 
complacency in him, and reflecting his glorious per- 
fections. If we suppose a world to fall from its 
allegiance to him, his infinite love of excellence, and 
his great end of thereby making himself illustrious, 
would, from the necessity of the case, repel the fallen, 
and his complacency in them could be restored only 
upon their recovery to virtue. The goodness of his 
nature might compassionately prevent their greater 
relapse and misery, by providential restraint and 
discipline. It might suggest expedient's for effecting 
their return, and give them a probation. But if, in 
the exercise of their evil affections, the will — the 
exponent and executor of these affections — still 
refused the overtures of his compassion, his infinite 
love of virtue would more repel them, and the sepa- 
ration, if the probation were fruitless, would necessarily 
be eternal ; unless we should inconsistently resort to 
materialism, and deny the immortality of the soul. 
In other words, God's infinite love is his complacency 
in those infinite attributes of wisdom, power, holiness, 
justice, goodness, and truth which constitute hismani- 



65 



fested character as a moral governor, and in all those 
creatures of his who bear and reflect his image. 
Whatever crosses these infinite attributes is necessa- 
rily contrary to his ends and purposes of govern- 
ment, and love itself, in and by which they essen- 
tially consist, must necessarily oppose, restrain, and 
punish it. Else moral distinctions are -annihilated, 
our moral nature vanishes, and the very idea of a 
personal God and sovereign is a chimera. 

.Now this world is thus fallen. Natural and revealed 
religion presupposes this fact, and starts out from it. 
The systems of natural and revealed religion are the 
account of God's government over it as fallen, guilty, 
condemned, yet reprieved, susceptible of being 
restrained and limited in its wickedness, and of 
restitution, if God so please, and when, and how he 
pleases, through Jesus Christ, "the propitiation for 
onr sins." Its absolute death, or that of any part of 
it — d death to all hope of such restitution — occurs 
only when the means provided for its benefit are 
ultimately refused, and the stated probationary period 
expires. These systems are the expression of Divine 
love ; and love is honored as well in their sanctions 
of punishment as of reward, since God's end in his 
creation and government of the world, is not the 
happiness of his creatures, but his own glory in the 
manifestation of his perfections ; and their happiness 
is only conditional upon their conformity to God, and 
6* 



66 



a stated consequence of it. Speculations about the 
origin of evil cannot be admitted at all into our 
reasonings, since that subject is utterly beyond our 
faculties, and God has given us no information upon 
it, nor a clue to guide us. Whatever be the true 
account of it, it could not be supposed to affect inju- 
riously the Divine character ; for that, upon the 
admission of a God, would be absurd. It would be 
equally absurd on the principles of atheism ; for if 
there be not a God, the Divine character is not a 
subject of reasoning at all. But, evil certainly exist- 
ing, — a matter of consciousness, experience, and 
revelation, — and impossible, without atheism, to be 
denied, the Godhead is equally dishonored, and we 
go to atheism only by another road, if we admit not 
his love of excellence as engaged to restrain and 
punish it, and to prevent its unnecessary inroads upon 
his general system. 

Whatever reasons exist, then, in natural and 
revealed religion, for the institution of civil govern- 
ment, and for domestic slavery as an important 
modification of it, for the more effectual restraint 
and discipline of imbecile and wicked men, prove it 
to be consistent with the Divine love, and required 
by it for the ends of God's moral providence. Those 
reasons are not invalidated by the law of love, and 
cannot be, since they are the simple account which 
religion gives us of God's way of governing the fallen 



67 



world • for the ends of his infinite benevolence. So 
far 'as slavery consists of punishment, and so far as it 
consists of discipline, it equally magnifies the Divine 
benevolence, and all those related attributes of God 
by which his love is manifested in the general order- 
ing of this revolted scene. There is, as we have seen, 
no a priori reason why God should not ordain a state 
of slavery, as well as other varieties of restraint 
and discipline which all but virtual atheists acknowl- 
edge, and of which many are, in their nature, more 
severe, and more fatal to the happiness of the suffer- 
ing parties, and, actually, not less but more terrible in 
their abuse by tyrannical and wicked men. There 
are conceivable and probable reasons, as we have also 
seen, why he should ordain it, as things are in their 
present disturbed and disjointed state. There is, 
moreover, the evidence above detailed, that he has 
actually ordained it. To question and oppose it, 
therefore, on any merely philosophical and specula- 
tive grounds, or politically, as malevolent, destructive 
of happiness, contrary to the. rights of man, or 
inconsistent with our ideas of the natural progress ' 
and destiny of society, is to criticize by an infinitely 
unworthy standard, and incur the risks of that fatal 
plunge which so many wise men and whole nations 
have taken into atheistic unbelief. He who would 
prove that slavery is inconsistent with the Divine 
benevolence, must first prove that the world is not in 



that fallen state which the institution presupposes 
and implies ; that there are no such .reasons for it in 
the actual condition of things, as it professes, and 
makes its acknowledged ground ; and that there is no 
such proof of its ordinance in natural and revealed 
religion, as it sets forth. All other objections, in 
respect to principle, are merely conceptional, notional, 
and of no value ; and, however speciously glossed, or 
eloquently discussed, or triumphantly paraded, affect 
not the merits of the question. The practical objec- 
tions, though of far greater moment, and such as 
ought, to move all good men to the reformation of 
existing evils, yet invalidate not the ordinance itself. • 
If such evils were indefinitely multiplied, till universal 
discord and revolution should ensue, through the 
exasperated passions of mankind, that would be 
simply analogous to what has often happened to the 
best natural institutions of earth, and even to the 
church itself, whose Divine right, and their consist- 
ency with the law of love, have nevertheless been 
admitted, except by professed atheists and infidels, in 
every age. Such irregularities prove nothing but the 
wickedness of mankind. But that wickedness makes 
more evident the necessity of those very institutions 
which, as yet, through the imperfection of the parties 
concerned in them, have been but partially able to 
restrain it. It justifies the Divine wisdom in ordain- 
ing them, and the judgments consequent upon their 
unfaithful administration. 



69 



To one whose mind has dwelt long only upon such 
bad administrations, and whose warm imagination 
has exaggerated them, till they fill the whole circle of 
his vision, it is not surprising that views like these 
should seem, as they do to our excellent reviewer, 
" mere mysticism and conjecture." It is not to be 
expected that such persons, especially if the religious < 
sense has followed the direction of the sympathies 
and passions, should be able, at once, to separate 
slavery, or any similar institution, from the revolting 
accidents with which it has been familiarly associated 
in their excited minds. It might even seem to them 
a loss of virtue to abate their zeal by looking away 
from scenes of wrong and suffering which keep alive 
their generous emotions, to what they regard as 
metaphysical abstractions serving only to confuse the 
intellect, and harden the heart. Presbyter is aware 
at what disadvantage he writes, in this respect, in 
showing the consistency of slavery, — even in regard 
to its merely necessary ills, — with the law of love. It 
is as if one should argue upon the principles of life 
and health, or the benevolent genius of the healing 
art, with sensitive, but hitherto inexperienced children, 
in the hospitals of the Crimea, overcome with shudder- 
ing, as they would be, at the amputation of shattered 
limbs, and the probing of gaping wounds. To them 
the surgeon would seem but as a monster, and sisters 
of charity but as incarnate fiends. They would be 



70 



sensible to nothing but the shrieks or imprecations of 
the tortured subjects, and refer them only to the 
quick touches of the loving operators. The teacher 
must be content to wait till the paroxysms of affec- 
tionate, but wounded sensibility, were over, and 
longer observation and more careful reflection, or an 
actual experience, should make his metaphysics better 
understood. It is so, and by a like reason, that Sinai 
and Calvary themselves, where, to the morbid natural 
eye, love is hidden behind the severities of justice, 
are invested only with terrors, till their sublime 
rationale is opened to the awakened and inquiring 
spirit. These, and such like deep things. of God, are 
truly known only as a Divinely enlightened experi- 
ence unfolds them. Otherwise God seems but as a 
hard master to be propitiated, an enemy to be 
resisted, an oppressor to be overthrown. 

However, there are practical illustrations of this 
invidiously called mysticism which even children can 
understand. Our reviewer inadvertently suggests a 
striking instance; namely, the loving intercourse 
sometimes subsisting between master sand slaves in 
the patriarchal age. A touching account he gives of 
Abraham's " people." " They were married, and with 
their children were incorporated into his great family, 
and all the males were in the same way dedicated to 
the service of his and their covenant God. Unpro- 
tected by any government, he, with his wife and 



71 



immense flocks and herds, was safe under the guard- 
ianship of these faithful men, though surrounded by 
heathen tribes, and often removing from place to 
place. In arms they followed him, and rescued Lot 
out of the hands of the hostile kings who were carry- 
ing him away captive. One of them was intrusted 
with the delicate task of procuring from abroad a wife 
for Isaac, and if Abraham died childless, was tohave 
been his heir* They were Abraham's people, and 
looked up to him not as their oppressor, but as their 
Common friend." — This instance, which is the author's 
own, though there had never been another, would 
have been fatal to his theory that slavery is neces- 
sarily inconsistent with the law of love. It is a 
remarkable exemplification of that law. It repre- 
sents slavery practically according to its Divine 
idea, — ' mercy and truth meeting together, right- 
eousness and peace embracing each other.' 

But it is not alone. There have been children of 
Abraham, holden in the covenant, from his clay to 
the present, and there will be to the end of time, 
standing in the same magisterial relation, and exercis- 



* This is the same who said to Laban in urging his master's suit ; — 
" The Lord hath blessed my master greatly, and he is become great : and 
he hath given him flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and men-slaves 
and maid-sfares, and camels, and asses." Gen. 24: 35. — That faithful 
slave seems not to have been an abolitionist. But the new lights had not 
then risen. 



72 



ing it with the same spirit. Christianity supposes 
this in its manifold precepts to this very class of 
persons ; and the religion of Christ is not less fitted to 
sanctify the relation, than was the dispensation under 
which the virtuous patriarchs honored God. Bad as 
the Christian world has become, worse than the 
Jewish, because of its abuse of a greater light, God 
has not left it, and he will not leave it. In the dark- 
est times he will have a remnant to carry out his 
purposes to the end of the age ; and, for their sakes, 
his judgments will be stayed, and the day of ven- 
geance will be shortened. Those excited men who 
cannot appreciate the many honorable examples in 
our own country, as they are represented not merely 
by such corrected observers as Dr. Adams, but by 
slaves themselves who must be supposed to know ; 
may be very honest and sincere, but their eyes are 
holden. They see not what it most concerns them 
to understand, if they would be wise and patriotic 
men ; and their blunder may be even more injurious 
to their country than to themselves. It dishonors 
Christ; for it dishonors the many Christian masters 
and Christian slaves, whose familiar habits of life, if 
they were better understood, would be seen to bear 
no remote resemblance to the Abrahamic pattern. 
There are virtuous and honorable men, not a few, and 
ministers of the Gospel, whose very slaveholding is 
carried on, against their convenience and tastes, if 



73 



not their interest, from mere motives of Christian 
charity. They are weary of a burden which, never- 
theless, they bear patiently for the public good, hi 
every slaveholding State and city there are doubtless 
more than enough to have saved Sodom, who are 
neither " evidences of the deplorable frailty of human 
nature," nor " examples of warning." They are not 
even indiscreet, as some have asserted of our Lord, 
when, at Cana of Galilee, he was blind to the wisdom 
of a more enlightened age, and turned the water into 
wine ; — the loving Christ himself, forgetful of his 
high commission, and giving the authority of his 
Divine example to an institution destructive of the 
happiness of mankind ! We rebuke such profane criti- 
cism, to whatever subject it is applied. We accept 
not the pharisaism which so interprets all things 
by its shallow, outside, and vain-glorious philoso- 
phy, till it generates, unconsciously, a wild fanaticism, 
its block-head crazed by the dyspeptic vapors of its 
crude progenitor, ambitious of nothing but to scatter 
firebrands, and drive its smoking chariot over an 
incapable because then demented people. 

"But wisdom is justified of all her children." 
Christ was well understood by the wise of his own, 
time, to be neither a gluttonous man, nor a wine- 
bibber, and no otherwise a friend of publicans and 
sinners than as he did not denounce them to a swift 
destruction, but ate and drank with them, as a 
7 



74 



heavenly messenger, for their good, and the good of 
their households with them. As to what his pharisai- 
cal accusers judged he gave himself no concern. 
Why should he? Or why should his. disciples after 
him ? Prejudice and passion will see nothing as it is, 
and understand nothing ; but the greater the truth 
the more violent will be their resistance to it, and the 
more wrathful their condemnation of those whose 
opposite principles and motives they cannot compre- 
hend. We must keep on our way, and wait till the 
heat subsides, and the flurry is over. Such excite- 
ments will have their course, and their end, though 
it be in spasms and revolutions. They should not 
turn true men from a better purpose ; for explosions 
are better than the sacrifice of righteous principles ; 
and a general catastrophe is not so great an evil as 
the regal instalment of atheistic folly. Truth may 
fall, but it can never die ; or, if it die, it will have a 
better resurrection. God's government will stand, 
somehow, though all the winds and waves beat 
against it ; and he will carry it on, through all adver- 
sities, till he has put all things under him. Its order 
cannot be reversed. He made the world as he did, 
and not otherwise, to please himself; and he regulates 
and medicates its disordered constitution agreeably to 
his own counsels, and not the notions of his fallen 
creatures. We cannot make that straight which he has 
made crooked. The leopard will be spotted, and the 



75 



Ethiopian will be black, in spite of us. What things 
he has constituted unequal we cannot make equal if 
we try ; but we increase the inequality by our mad 
attempts, even if we are not destroyed ourselves by 
the reaction. There is less love than wisdom in the 
experiment ; and it will fall as much through its dis- 
guised selfishness as folly. Beautiful it would seem 
to have a state of universal equality and brotherhood. 
But a community, after the best pattern of cosmopol- 
itan ingenuity, breaks up by its mere expansion, or a 
more inglorious collapse. It does not hold together 
long enough for death to cover the shame of its 
projectors. The fabric of all reform, whether philo- 
sophical, or political, or both, without an indwelling 
Christ, is but a child's plaything. It lasts but while 
he builds it; and the topstone that he lays with 
shoutings, sinks the whole fabric into ruins. What 
becomes, then, of the conceited and noisy architect, 
though he be a child of larger growth, and his edifice 
be a capitol ? If he rears it with the materials of his 
previously demolished habitation, his last state is 
worse than his first, and his ultimate discomfort is 
only exceeded by the intoxication that produced it. 
If our better philanthropists, fired, as they are always 
likely to become, at length, by a political mania, 
should overturn the social fabric because of the 
necessary toil and sweat that compact and sustain 
it, or the unnecessary oppressions and cruelties that 



76 



bad men wantonly inflict within it, what would come 
next ? They would be the first to beg for an iron 
despotism, to save the things that remained from an 
absolute destruction. What revolutionism becomes, 
upon the mere instincts, or speculative fancies, even 
of well meaning and Christian men, history has given 
sufficient warning, if experience could ever make 
such imaginative people wise. Let them follow, if 
they will, the spirit that drives them on ; but let 
them not call it — love ! Not such was the pattern 
of the loving Christ. 

Our philosophers of oracular instincts, and Divine 
speculative ideas, should be more considerate of things 
actual and experimental, not as they would have 
them, but as God ordains them. It is idle to affect a 
wisdom, or a love, greater than he has manifested in 
his system of the world ; or to imagine that we can 
best honor him by reversing the analogies of nature, 
and the corresponding teachings of the Scripture. 
It is not a false science that describes his works in 
their respective genera, species, varieties, orders, 
individuals ; nor a spurious charity that is pleased 
when these perform the offices of their respective 
spheres, each in its own diversity, but all together so 
as to produce a general harmony. We could not 
make a better constitution. We should be likely, by 
our intermeddling, to stop the movement of the whole. 
"If the whole body were an eye, where were the 



77 



hearing ? if the whole were hearing, where were the 
smelling ? But now hath God set the members every 
one of them in the body as it hath pleased him. If 
they were all one member, where were the body ? " 
Oar philosophers would not have us require of others 
what we would not willingly perform ourselves ; nor 
perform ourselves what, according to their ideas of 
equality, others have no prerogative to require of 
us ; — but run away, a,nd steal, and kill that we may 
run. It were better that their love should constrain 
them to entertain the fugitives, and divide with them 
the domestic hearth. If they did not then more 
commend their theories, they would better test their 
sincerity, and probably sooner learn to bring their 
theory and practice into a more natural correspond- 
ence. Frequent visits of the "angels" would, at least, 
oblige them to be more conversant with the realities 
of life, and imagination would give place to a more 
corrected judgment, in respect to the constituted 
relations of the social state. 

We are slow to learn the lesson, amidst the con- 
fusions incident to the present state of things, but 
it is plain enough when understood, — that true 
charity consists not in doing what is impossible, or 
destructive, but what is for another's welfare in the 
sphere where God has placed him. To abandon 
that beautiful simplicity, for the sake of reducing all 
the spheres to one diameter, and all the diameters to 
7* 



78 



a point, is undoubtedly more magnificent and im- 
posing, according to a speculative standard ; it is 
romantic and heroic, and figures most where an am- 
bitious spirit, that could not otherwise be honored, 
delights to open its noisy theatres, and dignify its pro- 
spective triumphs. But it saves nothing. It feeds 
not the hungry, nor clothes the naked, nor comforts 
the afflicted. They perish by generations, while the 
gaudy vision tarries; and their aggravated wrongs 
and miseries cry out, at length, against the insane 
projectors of a fanciful salvation. We can relieve 
them, if we will, while they remain in their several 
appointed places, under the general " bondage of 
corruption," and possibly, now and then, lift them to 
a nearer equality with our own ; but we cannot 
remove the curse of sin. He only can do that whose 
righteous law inflicted the curse, and whose word is 
pledged to produce, by and by, a new creation. 
Meanwhile it is our probation to improve, and not to 
overturn, the present state ; to save, one by one, 
whom God puts within our reach, by active kindness, 
and not the whole, in mass, by bold resolves and 
frothy declamations ; to give help to the perishing, 
and joy to the stricken and withered heart, and not 
call down fire from heaven that would destroy the 
hovel equally with the palace, and desolate the fields 
that otherwise would have yielded food for all. From 
those ashes what would grow ? What would our 



79 



reformers have ? They would abolish and destroy. 
What substitute would they produce ? They speak 
great swelling words of an expected better state, but 
they define it not, Let them present their plan. 
Let us have the consummate project of their dream. 
Let their New Jerusalem come down out of heaven. 
Let their city in the clouds descend, that we may see 
its stately bulwarks, and consider its palaces ; that we 
may walk its golden streets, and drink of its crystal 
river, and rejoice in its glorious temple that hath no 
need of the sun or the moon to shine in it. Surely 
their laboring mountain ought, by this time, to bring 
forth, at least, — a scheme, if not for the regeneration 
of the world, yet of these ends of it which they are 
turning upside down. 

IV. Corollaries. 

If slavery, as argued above, be an ordinance of 
God, according to natural and revealed religion, and 
if it be consistent with that Divine love in which all 
religion essentially consists, it follows : — 

1. That all contrary suppositions, theories, and 
interpretations must be false, wherever the fallacy 
lies ; since the will of God, and not human imagina- 
tions and conceits, is the supreme law of the world ; — 
that they are not less false because they have capti- 
vated so large portions of society, in different periods, 
and have become inwrought, so extensively, into the 
affairs of social, political, and ecclesiastical life ; since 



80 



no numbers or combinations of men can annul or 
alter a Divine constitution; — and that this fallacy 
would not be less but more destructive, should it be 
entertained by the Church and State in general, or 
the greater part of them, and work out, consistently, 
civil revolution, or the abolition of slavery throughout 
the country, or the world ; since questions of right 
and wrong cannot be settled by majorities, and the 
Divine government cannot be superseded; but all 
such attempts react, sooner or later, and in ways 
incomprehensible, beforehand, to the greater confusion 
and ultimate loss of the misguided people ; — as all 
history confirms. 

2. That we may reasonably look for the fallacy in 
that specious humanitarian philosophy which, accord- 
ing to its respective types, and periods, and degrees, 
denies, ignores, diminishes, or travesties those facts of 
natural and revealed religion which slavery presup- 
poses, and in view of which it was instituted by God ; 
namely, — the fallen, depraved, imbecile, disordered, 
and condemned state of the world requiring the 
ordinance for the better restraint, discipline, and 
correction of bad men, and of some more than others ; 
and for the better preservation of society in general, 
during its probationary state ; — a philosophy which, 
contrarily, dignifies the sinful nature of man as capa- 
ble, without such restraint and discipline, of working 
out for itself, in a state of liberty, independence, and 



81 



equality, personal and public prosperity and happi- 
ness; — a philosophy which accordingly substitutes 
the natural sentiments, sympathies, tastes, volitions, 
purposes, and resolves of the human mind for super- 
natural grace ; or jfbts the latter in subserviency to 
the former; or both out of their due relation and 
proportion to each other; — a philosophy which, 
virtually affirming the related natural ability and 
perfectibility of the race, proposes corresponding 
educational, social, political, and ecclesiastical organi- 
zations, for the fuller and freer development of these 
alleged natural powers, and, by the interaction and 
reciprocal influence of such natural powers and cor- 
responding institutions, to recover society from its 
disturbances and irregularities, and settle it in a state 
of general intelligence, refinement, thrift, and happi- 
ness ; — a philosophy which, according to its different 
degrees, accepts the Divine word but as a product of 
assisted human faculties, without the plenary inspira- 
tion of God, or as a mere complement to human 
wisdom, and subject to its criticism and interpreta- 
tion as a standard of judgment and belief; or which 
wholly rejects the Scripture, and, in its stead, exalts 
the inspirations of human genius, the outflow of 
human sympathies, the impulse of human instincts, 
or the directory of the human conscience, or mingles 
these all in indescribable confusion, as a guide of 
life ; — a philosophy which makes human happiness 



82 



the end of living, and productiveness of happiness 
the criterion of virtue ; which holds nature and art, 
politics and legislation, trade and commerce, litera- 
ture, science, and religion, subservient to these vain 
ideas, impressing its own character insensibly upon ex- 
isting civilizations, as material or intellectual, and not 
spiritual ; as sesthetical, and not moral ; formal, and 
not vital ; or fanatical, and not devout ; — a philosophy 
which produces mechanisms without vitality ; inflation 
without growth; activity without strength; profes- 
sion without principle ; combinations without fellow- 
ship; vaunting without accomplishment; magnifi- 
cence without dignity ; and honor without virtue ; — 
a philosophy which glories in all these formalities and 
appearances, as the product of its own ingenuity and 
skill, and glorifies not that God "Of whom, and 
through whom, and to whom are all things." It is of 
the earth, earthly ; and it perishes with the earth. 

3. That the anti-slavery movement in general, 
being a remarkable phenomenon of modern times, 
if it be inconsistent, as argued above, with natural 
and revealed religion, must he referred to the preva- 
lence of this false philosophy, since this, and no other 
known cause, is adequate to so remarkable an 
effect ; — that such a reference of it is not, as pre- 
tended by the reviewer, " mere mysticism, conjecture, 
and unwarrantable assumption," because such a phi- 
losophy certainly exists; because it has a certain 



83 



history from an early period of Christianity ; because 
it has had, all along, diverse commentators and prop- 
agandists who have infused it into the theology, 
ethics, and legislation of all periods ; because its 
various expounders, apologists, and adversaries may 
be read, if they are not, by all men ; because, in this 
country, and in its relations to theology, Jonathan 
Edwards is known to have refuted it; because, never- 
theless, it has been, ever since, in different forms, 
having a free course, while Jonathan Edwards is well- 
nigh forgotten, or his meaning is interpreted out of 
him, and his views of the question now in hand are 
well-nigh suppressed ; because the cause and the 
effect have a natural congruity and relationship to 
each other, and are actually found to coexist in the 
same minds, institutions, and communities, flowing out 
in the same channels, with similar and reciprocal 
influences and results, as, on a smaller scale, in many 
past periods of history ; — and, furthermore, that this 
account is sufficient, and is an adequate, and the only 
possible account of the related moral, social, and 
political phenomena which are now occurring among 
the civilized and half-civilized nations in general, dis- 
tracted, as they are, by these Utopian ideas, and 
vainly attempting, in disregard of Scripture and 
experience, to improve their bad conditions, not by 
converting individual men, according to the Gospel, 
but by overturning public institutions in despite of it ; 



84 



not by infusing a new life, but destroying old organ- 
izations ; and by reconstructing their social edifices 
not in submission to the word of God, but the 
theories of unbelieving men, and in contemptuous 
disregard of those first and everlasting principles which 
are necessary to preserve their freedom from licen- 
tiousness, their self-government from anarchy ; or, to 
prevent the necessary reaction of taller and more 
oppressive despotisms, and the meeting, at length, of 
the greatest liberty and the greatest barbarism, after 
some possible modern fashion of elective tyranny, in 
the greatest moral, social, and political degradation of 
the world, from which it could be restored only by 
the fat of the Creator. 

4. That, consequently, it is the duty of all virtuous 
and patriotic men, and especially of ministers of the 
Gospel, as professed guides and conservators of soci- 
ety, to beware of this specious and wide-spreading 
sophistry, and jealous of the influence of its superfi- 
cial, bustling, and intriguing propagators; — to in- 
quire more carefully into its history as early intro- 
duced from pagan sources into the, Christian schools, 
its gradual, but inconstant development in Church 
and State, in all periods, especially the present 
boasted philosophical period of Christendom, and the 
innumerable vanities and delusions to which it has 
given rise ; — to criticize, by a Divine standard, the 
chimerical expectations it has awakened, both in 



85 



Church and State, of a perfected state of humanity 
by new organizations of society, upon its own pro- 
fessedly liberal ideas, while the influence of vital 
Christianity is continually diminishing; the faith of 
the primitive churches, and the puritan doctrines of 
the reformation are more extensively dishonored ; a 
state of general social disintegration, confusion, and 
strife, is becoming more extensive and alarming ; the 
materials for a perfect commonwealth are rapidly 
diminishing; a more individualized selfishness, and 
unscrupulous overreaching are well-nigh universal ; a 
gloomy uncertainty reigns, scarcely relieved by the 
professions of new cliques and combinations that 
steam up from the decaying rubbish of the old ; the 
best servants of Church and State are retiring to 
secret places, while noisy partisans, and insane agita- 
tors disgrace the posts which they had adorned ; and 
" Men's hearts are failing them for fear, and for look- 
ing after those things which are coming on the 
earth," because of the evidently increasing incapacity 
of society in general for self-government, or for appre- 
ciating and enjoying the blood-bought blessings of 
civil and religious liberty. And this obligation has 
peculiar force upon ministers of the Gospel, lest 
they be borne, more extensively and irrecoverably, 
upon the popular current of secularity, selfishness, 
and unbelief, and seduced to a more general adoption 
of merely human, political, rhetorical, philosophical, 
8 



86 



fantastic, and, ultimately, formal and superstitious 
methods of performing their Divine mission, to the 
grief of all truly Christian men, the contempt of 
judicious and patriotic citizens, and the curse of 
Almighty God. 

These corollaries, and many others which could 
not be drawn out, or even suggested, within the 
limits proper to this letter, follow, by logical neces- 
sity, from the premises and reasonings to which 
Presbyter here calls the attention of his brethren; 
and they cannot be controverted if those premises 
and reasonings are sustained. Yet they are not 
merely inferential, but admit of independent support, 
and have a reflex action to confirm the principles 
from which they naturally result. For they fall in 
with the fundamental idea of natural and revealed 
religion, as the supreme and authoritative arbiter and 
judge of affairs, in opposition to the conceits, notions, 
and opinions of men ; with the natural laws of mind, 
and of language and interpretation, by which we 
ascertain the meaning of the Divine records ; as of all 
other compositions ; with the phenomena of physical 
nature which are open to the common observation of 
men ; with the analogies of history and experience, 
our only safe lights next to the holy Scriptures ; with 
the theology of the Bible, as it stands in the letter 
of the inspired volume, and is drawn out in the 
formulas and standards of the church, in its best 



87 



periods; with the first principles of ethics as con- 
tained in the decalogue, and Christ's new command- 
ment ; and with the existing manifestations of the 
Divine Providence throughout the world. 

It is this comprehensive bearing of the question of 
slavery, that gives it so much greater consequence 
than is apt to be imagined by those whose instincts 
and impulses are permitted to govern their decisions. 
Every thing in the government of God is related to 
every other thing, and stands in its proper adjust- 
ment to all the parts of the general system. The 
shock that we communicate, at a single point, vibrates 
through the universe. Its effect is traceable, for the 
present, by reason of our imperfect faculties, but a 
little way. But we hear from it again; and, perhaps, 
then, by the ruin which it causes at another ex- 
tremity, or a disturbance at the centre. If God has 
judged slavery important in his scheme of providence, 
there is no principle of morals, no doctrine of religion, 
no interest of the State, no condition of the Church, 
present or prospective, that would not suffer, not 
from the correction of its abuses, but from its aboli- 
tion, while the reasons of it continue. It could not 
cease before its natural period, without a derange- 
ment whose course and consequences could be calcu- 
lated only by omniscience. It might hasten a 
general catastrophe of the nations. It might pro- 
duce a wreck of all things. Our fond imaginations 



88 



and foolish hopes could not prevent or limit the 
destruction, and our subsequent regrets would be 
unavailing. If slavery be accounted wrong, yet this 
thought of its vast relations should sober us in discus- 
sion, and moderate our measures. If it present an 
open question, it should the more restrain us. If it 
be right, language could not describe the folly of its 
intemperate adversaries, the madness of its rash assail- 
ants. Let destruction come, if it must, on either 
side, whether for maintaining or subverting it, against 
the will of God, yet the heart of Christian men 
should be moved only to (^efer it, to shorten the days 
of vengeance, and to weep over the desolation. 

Revolution may come, with its accumulated horrors 
of civil and servile war. It is likely to come, as 
things are tending. Fanaticism, as usual, may stir 
up a fury which will defy control. Whether such 
a remedy for abuses of government is right, it would 
exceed the design of these pages to discuss. The 
distinctions above taken between the Church and 
State would, however, suggest a method of discussion 
that might afford no little aid to a serious inquirer. 
But, whatever should be judged, on the ground 
of natural religion, it is evident that Christianity 
and its ministers are precluded from all such expe- 
dients for the social regeneration of mankind, and, 
specifically, from making slavery an occasion for the 
use of them. Paul, and all the Apostles have settled 



that question for the church, under its supernatural 
dispensation of the Gospel, whatever may be true, or 
whatever necessary for the world still regulated only 
by natural religion, and having not citizenship in a 
more spiritual kingdom. The State, in distinction 
from the ecclesia, is and must be political, and human 
policy, without the Divine life of Christ, is and must 
be utilitarian and expedient ; for the stream of social 
life can rise no higher than its fountain in the human 
soul. But Christians, and Christian ministers are 
supposed to be of another mould ; and this it is of 
great consequence to observe, while, through the 
influence of a spurious philosophy, a "mighty process 
of secularization is now going on, which is likely to 
bring the church and the world down to the same 
low level of merely human conceits, and human 
passions ; and while human happiness, and not God's 
righteousness, is likely to be made the great end' of 
life. A true Christianity is not so. God's righteous- 
ness is its foundation, and its top-stone ; and though 
Paul himself, or an angel from heaven, should preach 
otherwise, they would be accursed. Christianity is, 
without doubt, the greatest of all builders, and has 
the most glorious of all cities. Yet it builds not 
with crude materials of earth ; but with jaspers, and 
sapphires, and all manner of precious stones. It is 
the greatest of destroyers; but only by reaction, 
when it meets the greatest of all resistance, and 



90 



society strikes "against its wall of adamant, and is 
driven back." Christianity condescends to nothing 
but a Divine activity. * It affects no secular policy, or 
fashion, or influence, or preeminence. It is not de- 
signed to thunder in the Capitol, to tower above the 
State, or figure in its ranks, or control by force whom 
it cannot assimilate by virtue. It revolves round its 
own centre, and flies not off in eccentric paths, to 
increase the perturbations and irregularities of the 
general system. Christianity cannot be identified 
with the State, nor can the two reciprocate and 
interchange offices without mutual decrepitude, and 
premature dissolution. When that union, as in 
apostate periods, and, as now, remarkably, takes 
place, the Scripture calls the unnatural product "a 
beast," and " a bottomless pit " is opened to receive 
it, — the same which is yawning to engulph the . 
corrupt Church and State dynasties of the old 
world, and which it is the probation of this country 
to avoid ; — which may God grant. Christianity 
cannot lay its head in Delilah's lap without being 
shorn of its strength, and losing its eyes, and grind- 
ing in the prison, to be dragged out for the mere 
sport of the uncircumcised. Its hair, meanwhile, 
might grow for another desperate struggle ; but 
it could never resume its dignity, or recover its 
prerogatives. It might be powerful to bring down 
some temple of the idolaters, but to be itself buried 



91 



in its ruins. Samson died still a Hebrew, and a 
strong man ; and he died in faith : but, neverthe- 
less, he died like a fool. He should not have died 
at all. He should not have lost his hair. 

Political agitations and revolutions are not for 
the church of God. Christ so taught us, -by the 
most significant illustration, when he set it up, by his 
Spirit and his apostles, on the day of Pentecost, and 
then indicated the relations of Christianity to the 
social state. He had gathered, in the central city 
of the world, representatives from all its countries: — 
Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, 
Cappadocians, Pontians, Asians, Phrygians, Pamphyl- 
ians, Egyptians, Lybians, Cyreneans, Romans, Jews, 
Proselytes, Cretes, Arabians. Peter taught them, — 
the same whom Christ had cured of his political 
rashness by that sharp rebuke — " Put up thy sword 
into thy sheath: they that take the sword shall 
perish by the sword." Three thousand were con- 
verted ; and they returned to their respective coun- 
tries, bound by no secret oaths, whispering no party 
shibboleths, and projecting no illuminated theories to 
reconstruct society upon a better model, but diffus- 
ing through it, everywhere, a better spirit. They 
went forth not to revolutionize, but to convert ; not 
to burn the old habitations, bad though they were, 
and turn out the dwellers, promiscuously, into the 
pitiless storm, but to make them more tolerable, and 



94 



minded only to destroy slavery by the infusion of a 
Christian spirit : — that, however, it is eminently 
gratifying to see them, at length, so far recovered to 
a normal state of mind, and making such gentle 
acknowledgments and professions : — that to bring 
them to these more reasonable and Christian views, 
has been the leading object of Presbyter in both his 
letters : — that, if their present suggestions be not 
mere logical artifice and evasion, but a matter of 
sincere conviction, and if they will hold to them, 
consistently, in practice, then all dangerous agitation 
will be at an end, speculative discussion will cease 
from the pulpit, and the religious press, clerical 
haranguing from the platform, political action from 
the church, and partisan warfare from society in 
general. These and such like vanities will be suc- 
ceeded by offices of Christian charity ; a new type of 
philanthropy, and more consistent with godliness, will 
be revealed ; the public mind will be prepared for 
more healthy discussion, and generous activity ; a 
saving change will come over the body politic ; 
slavery, as it is, will be succeeded by slavery, as it 
ought to be, through the inworking of a Christian 
spirit; and for such an annihilation of it all good 
Christians and honest patriots will unite in a general 
jubilee ; for the millennium, in that respect, will 
have come. 

Such a change in our philosophers would be the 



95 



more auspicious, because it would promise the only 
jDossible deliverance of the country from an approach- 
ing catastrophe. The war of abstractions has brought 
the nation almost to its crisis. The principle of 
liberty and equality has been arrayed against slavery, 
till our social edifice is shaken to its foundations ; and 
ruin must ensue if the strife be carried on. For the 
principles involved are vital and essential. They are 
not sectional, political, prudential, financial, but ethical 
and theological. They pertain to the centre ; and a 
strife at the great heart would, at length, draw in all 
the subordinate forces of society ; and dissolution 
would be inevitable. 

If, then, our fanciful philosophers are ready to 
hold abstractions as nothing, and to treat them 
accordingly, giving up all controversy in regard to 
principles, and attentive only to facts ; that is — the 
way and manner in which slavery is carried on, — and 
to Christian methods of meliorating, improving, and 
thereby destroying it, with reference to the setting 
up of a perfect Christian state, — our country, without 
doubt, will soon become a spectacle to the world. 
There is, it is true, a sense in which slavery as it is ; 
that is — apart from its principle, — is an abstraction, 
as a predicate taken from its subject is an abstraction, 
or as clothes are the abstract of a man ; and, in that 
respect, it might be imagined that difficulties and 
disputes would occasionally arise. But such an 



96 



abstraction, not being merely notional and specula- 
tive, like liberty, equality, and fraternity, but a thing 
to be looked upon and handled, could be more easily 
disposed of, or shaped to existing exigencies, or be 
made conformable to better acknowledged standards, 
than elementary ideas, or mere fictions of the brain. 
It would not be so likely to intoxicate the imagina- 
tion, or inflame the passions, or be made subservient 
to political views. Principles, whether right or w T rong, 
are immutable. But fashions change ; and nothing 
is more susceptible of the influence than clothes. 
The nation could not well be distracted on that 
account; for new fashions w r ould set in before the 
parties could gird themselves for any deadly strife 
about the old ; or the disputants might be diverted 
into a more friendly quarrel concerning their respec- 
tive habiliments of war, and the fume would* pass off 
in a campaign of tailoring diplomacy. Or, the offend- 
ing party w r ould see the advantage of making clothes 
after an improved pattern, and the aggrieved would 
have their complacency restored by the new costume. 
Even the old clothes would not be thought so offen- 
sive in the abstract, as they were in the concrete. The 
abuses of slavery would not make so great a figure, 
apart from its principles ; or, if they did, they would 
be more willingly corrected. At the w r orst, a war of 
fashions is never prolonged or deadly. A better 
temper would grow r , imperceptibly, on both sides. 



97 



They would come together, and their combined 
, wisdom would find means of correcting unnecessary 
irregularities, or of repairing their injurious effects. 
Our philosophers in particular, then confining them- 
selves to the thing as it is, and to the greater improve- 
ments that would be, would naturally lose their zeal 
in respect to matters beyond their sphere of obser- 
vation and jurisdiction, belonging appropriately to 
their neighbors, and would busy themselves more with 
their own affairs. Their heated imagination being- 
brought down to its natural proportion to their more 
sober faculties, all their, powers would thenceforth be 
harmonized, and, in the state of healthful activity 
which would ensue, they would presently forget their 
ugly dreams, and make a better reckoning of reali- 
ties. Three or four millions of slaves would not seem 
of so much greater consequence to the world than 
twenty millions of freemen ; yet, being held in value 
in proportion to their quantity of being, or of merit, 
and consequently acted upon for the sake of better- 
ing their condition, they would immediately feel the 
enlivening influence of such a revived Christian and 
patriotic spirit. The generous excitement would 
reach their lowliest cabins. It would increase their 
courage, constancy, and fidelity. It would strengthen 
their humane affections, alleviate their burdens, purify 
their pleasures, inspire their worship, awaken holier 
aspirations after an improved social state, and thus 



98 



produce the only effectual, and the only possible prep- 
aration for it. If our philosophers are sincere, and 
will be consistent, the nation will be saved. 

Are they sincere ? Will they be consistent ? Will 
they abjure their abstractions and conceits, their 
speculations and theories, their personal invectives 
and partisan finesse, their fiery rhetoric and revolu- 
tionary agitation, and go out as missionaries preach- 
ing the Gospel to masters and slaves after the manner 
of Christ and his Apostles, and with reference to the 
same great ends ? Will they substitute for their 
alleged spiritual illuminations, their new and im- 
proved lights, the old-fashioned and substantial veri- 
ties of natural and revealed religion ; and make 
society better, not by assailing its old foundations, 
but by infusing into all its disorganized departments, 
the restoring and conserving principle of a heavenly 
life ? Will they contribute to introduce that perfect 
state — the object of their fond imaginings, — in 
which there shall be no need of punishments, 
restraints, and discipline, — not by theological rodo- 
montade, ethical romancing, logical chicanery, liter- 
ary artifice, political confusions, popular excitements, 
social contentions, personal animosities, and the over- 
turning of society in general, all in subserviency 
to their Divine idea of — liberty, — but by the 
Word and the Spirit of God? Will they subor- 
dinate Immunity to the Godhead, happiness to right- 



99 



eousness, rights to duties, imagination to judgment, 
instinct to reason, and all the faculties to the holy 
Scriptures? Will they consent that God should 
govern the world in his own way ? Will they bear 
ivitness in the earth for Him ? — Great is the problem 
of the future ! 

That problem, and all others whatsoever related to 
it, or dependent upon it, must be solved mainly by 
ministers of the Gospel. They are the constituted 
leaders of society in morals and religion. If they 
magnify their office, and teach not for doctrine the 
commandments of men, they will be holden in the 
Divine covenant, and conduct the host into the 
promised land. But, if, imprudently misled by a vis- 
ionary philosophy, they make the Divine word sub- 
servient to speculative and romantic ideas, and the 
achievement 6T a secular and political salvation, 
they will find their graves, with the bewildered and 
idolatrous people, on the hither side of Jordan, with 
no prospect of a better resurrection. — May God 
preserve them. — And let an unworthy Presbyter be 
pardoned, if, in his honest zeal to "vindicate the 
ways of God to man," he has exceeded the bounds of 
a good discretion, or said aught to wound, unneces- 
sarily, the feelings of his brethren. Fare ye well ! 



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